The Benevolent Doctor
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, days 1542 through 1623 (alternating, Fr/Su/Tu): #6 in G/DW crossover series: While at McKinley, new allies are discovered, in the future of New New York, the Doctor and Martha are called in by old friends with a couple of unexpected passengers.
1. And Then There Were Five

_Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 73rd cycle. Now cycle 74!_

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**"The Benevolent Doctor"  
Glee/Doctor Who crossover #6 (following "Guardian of the Array")  
from Glee: Santana, Brittany, Artie, Puck, Sugar, Quinn  
from Doctor Who: 10th Doctor, Martha**

**1. And Then There Were Five**

_March 2012 – Lima, Ohio_

Right away, Artie had known he wouldn't have a choice. For the time being, as much as he was keeping Gemma's request in mind and trying to keep the flow of information to a minimum, he wouldn't be able to pretend as though they could ignore what they'd just found out. It wasn't just them, not just him and Puck and Sugar who had once met the Doctor, it was Santana and Brittany, too. They'd discovered it all because of him, because he'd gotten one glimpse at the get well soon card Brittany was drawing for Quinn and he'd recognized the blue thing that was meant to be the TARDIS. Now they had agreed to share their story and, because they had pulled her into this now, they were in the process of finding Sugar so she could be there, too.

"Got her," he caught Puck's voice and turned to see him coming up the hall with the girl in tow.

"What's going on?" she asked, looking confused. "He wouldn't say, just that it was urgent." Artie wanted to sigh, but he held it back.

"In here," he nodded, and they followed him into the empty choir room. Puck shut the door, as Sugar saw the two Cheerios sitting there, waiting.

"What are they doing here?" she pointed.

"We could ask you the same thing," Santana frowned, while Brittany waved at Sugar.

"They've met him, too," Artie explained to her, and she stared at the pair in shock.

"The Doctor… You've met the Doctor, too?"

"Wait, you did?" Santana stood. Sugar nodded. "Well he gets around, doesn't he?"

"Alright, so tell us," Puck crossed his arms.

"Hold up," Santana shook her head. "Before we say anything, how do we know you're not just messing with us?"

"How would we do that?" Artie glared. "It's not like it's all over the place, the Doctor and…"

"Well clearly it is, if we've all met him," Brittany piped in, and Santana pointed at her as though to say 'yes, good point, exactly.'

"Okay so yours was a he, that's one thing," Artie looked to the other two.

"Is that an option?" Santana blinked.

"Apparently. Artie met the Doctor but she was a woman, and I know you're going to say 'well then it wasn't him,' but we swear to you it was, it's like he can change or something. What did yours look like?"

"He was tall," Brittany started, and Santana hesitated before following on.

"He had this hair that sort of stuck out over here," she mimed over her head. "He wore a suit, and he had a sort of long coat."

"Then that's another one," Artie, as usual, found his being intrigued would trump his desires to keep the information in check. "Puck and Sugar met one… version, I met another, and you did, too, that's three so far. I don't even know how many there are."

"When did you meet… her?" Santana asked, finding it hard to picture the image in her head as anything else.

"I was eight, not too long after my accident," Artie answered. "We ended up in Indiana in the eighties, there were aliens, but they had this shield that made them look human, so they could blend in and be safe, kind of like witness protection." The Doctor had removed the adjustment in his glasses that had allowed him to see the aliens despite their shields, which he guessed he wouldn't have needed anyway, but then he had to think, if they'd fixed the individual shields back then, then what was to say there weren't shielded aliens outside of the Indiana town. He wouldn't be surprised if Coach Sylvester was one…

"A few years back, when I was in Dayton with my mother and my sister," Puck added. "I didn't meet the Doctor for a while, I was with a friend of his, Jack. There was some woman trying to wipe out my descendants, so we had to stop her. Then there was a prison, that's where I met him, and Rose." There was a pause.

"I was six… but I remember," Sugar nodded, her thoughts travelling to another world and another name. "There were some people in trouble, and we tried to free them. They didn't all make it out…" They had never seen Sugar Motta so sombre, and it was a strange effect to witness. The others stared at her for a beat, and then turned back to the Cheerios.

"It was a couple years ago for us, too," Santana started. "In the summer, we had this camp, and we went on a trip to the Grand Canyon."

"I was going to go to that," Puck remembered. "But my mom said we couldn't afford it."

"Well, we went, and that's where it happened, that we met them."

"Was Rose with him?" Sugar suddenly asked.

"Who?" Santana asked.

"When I met him, and Puck, too, he was travelling with a girl, her name was Rose."

"No, we didn't see her. Our Doctor did have someone though, her name was Martha."

"She was really nice," Brittany smiled. "She helped us with… well…" She paused, looking to Santana to make sure whether they should carry on or not.

"We were on our trip," Santana nodded. "You didn't really miss much," she tossed a look to Puck. "I mean the Grand Canyon was great to see and all, but our guide was a pain, we barely got to do anything, and they wouldn't let us get closer, even though plenty of other people were doing it…"

"Santana…" Brittany cut in, sensing she was rambling off.

"Right, sorry. Anyway, after a while, we got bored, and we wandered off. We didn't know they were there, the Doctor and Martha. They weren't the ones we saw first, first we saw the ship."

"Didn't know it was a ship," Brittany shook her head, though she was smiling, like she could still see it for the first time.

TO BE CONTINUED (SUNDAY)


	2. Breakaway

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**2. Breakaway**

_Grand Canyon – 2008_

Santana didn't think it was possible for their tour guide to make something like the Grand Canyon become boring, but he had succeeded. With how much he kept droning on, it was a wonder no one had considered throwing themselves off the edge.

"Brittany?" she turned to the girl at her side. "Hey…" she nudged her. The blonde had been standing there for a while, being so still, she thought maybe she might be defying the laws of nature and still be listening to the guide, but in fact her eyes were closed: she was sleeping standing up. Once Santana had nudged her though, she startled awake and looked around. Santana swore she saw disappointment flash over her face when she realized they were still where they were, and that only made her smile. If this guy thought he had the way of keeping a bunch of fourteen-year-olds entertained, he had it all wrong.

"Is it over yet?" Brittany asked aloud, and Santana stifled a snort when she saw the guide had heard them and thrown a frown at them. "Sorry," Brittany mumbled.

"Hey, come on, let's go look around, I bet we can find a gift shop or something," Santana offered.

"Won't we get in trouble?"

"So what? What is he going to do, send us to our rooms?" Santana chuckled, which made Brittany smile. "Come on," she tilted her head to the side and, making sure they wouldn't be seen, they separated from the group.

X

"Martha? Keep up, will you?" the Doctor frowned, trying at the same time to keep an eye on his companion and locate the thing he'd wanted to show her.

"Am I supposed to actually see the Grand Canyon, or am I just following you like some kind of…"

"Here, wait," he stopped her, staring at the ground, taking a stop two inches to the left, looking up, then down again, retreating an inch, staring up once more, then nodding to himself. "That's it," he declared, reaching in his pocket and pulling out what looked like binoculars, if they'd been made by someone who was really into tinkering on their gadgets. It gave the impression that it could see to the farthest reaches of the planet, which Martha soon found out wasn't too much of an exaggeration. He looked through them, then turned back to her with a satisfied smile. "Stand here, take these," he instructed, stepping aside and pulling her to stand where he'd stood, down to the inches to left and behind, before handing her the binoculars.

"What am I looking f…" Her last word was cut off by an intake of breath. "Doctor, what did you do?"

"Did you see it?"

"I saw it alright. But, Doctor, isn't that, well… defacing a natural landmark?" she muttered under her breath.

"Your secret and mine… and Elvis," he adjusted, smirking when he saw the look on her face.

X

"There's too many people, we're going to get lost," Brittany worried.

"No we won't, just listen for the snores and…"

"You shouldn't be wondering on your own," a woman's voice made them startle and they turned to find themselves face to face with a security guard. "Go on," she pointed off, and Santana grabbed Brittany's hand and pulled her in the direction the guard pointed.

"I think the tour guide is that way," Brittany told her.

"Who cares," Santana kept leading them away.

Gemma smirked to herself, tugging at the rented hat, which had kept her face more or less obscured as she spoke to the girls. One day, they might actually remember her; it wouldn't be this day. If there was one thing about being in a place so crowded that she appreciated, it was that she was all but certain that no one would pay a mind to her if she up and disappeared, which she did, after pressing at the strap around her wrist.

"Doctor, what are you…" Martha frowned, stepping back as she'd bumped into the Doctor, who'd suddenly skidded to a stop.

"I thought I saw something…" his voice was low. "It couldn't be," he told himself, but he wasn't sure if he could believe this either.

X

"That wasn't there when we got here," Brittany stopped and pointed, causing Santana to get tugged back, as she'd still been holding her hand.

"What wasn't where?" she turned to look and saw what had caught Brittany's attention. Something that looked like a phone booth, only it was blue and made of wood, with windows… "Maybe it's just some weird… work station, I don't know." But Brittany was curious, and she broke off to go check it out. Santana wasn't going to get split up from her, especially here, so she went, too. Brittany looked back at her, reaching for the door handle, as though to ask whether or not she should. "It's probably locked." Brittany tried anyway… and it opened.

At the same time, the girls discovered something that did not add up. They looked at the box on the outside, really looked at it, then looked again inside… it drew them right in.

X

"It's probably nothing," the Doctor told Martha as they walked back to the TARDIS. He'd made them go back before they'd really finished their tour, claiming to have had 'a feeling.' "Wait, do you hear that?" he asked, staring back at her.

"Hear what?" she asked, as they went up to the door and he put in the key. He frowned, feeling it resist for a moment, but then it opened, and as the door swung open, Martha could finally hear what he'd heard: the phone was ringing. He hurried to pick it up, while Martha stepped in and shut the door.

"Hello?" the Doctor answered the phone, an unmistakable curiosity in his voice.

"Doctor!" a great big voice replied, and when he recognized it, he was floored.

"Brannigan? Is that you?" At the sound of the cat man's name, Martha looked up. The Doctor shrugged at her: he had no clue either.

"Yes, it is," Brannigan answered, and the Doctor couldn't place the tone in his voice; something bothering him, for sure, but there was something else. "You told us how to contact you, see, and now… We need your help, Doctor."

"Tell me where to find you, we're on our way," he moved around the console, flipped a lever, and the TARDIS took off.

X

Already finding the big room in the small box had been one thing. Finding corridors that led even further into the box had been another. Santana had just been about to reach for a doorknob when the ground gave a shake, and both she and Brittany were nearly thrown off their feet.

"What was that?" Brittany asked.

"I don't know, but we should probably get out of here," she held out her hand again, and Brittany quickly took it as they retraced their steps and found their way back to the first room, then came to a stop. They weren't alone. There were two of them, a man and a woman, both of them staring back at the girls.

"What?" said the man.

TO BE CONTINUED (TUESDAY)


	3. Stowaway

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**3. Stowaway**

_Inside the TARDIS_

When Santana had felt Brittany grab hold of her hand with both of hers, she didn't question it. She squeezed back, promising she wouldn't let anyone get to her.

"So is this place yours then?" she spoke loudly and firmly, to assert some kind of power. "It's really weird, I mean… How is it bigger on the inside?"

"Well, actually, there's a fairly simple explanation for… No, hold on, I'll be asking the questions here if you don't mind," the man looked like he was about to say something very amusing, right before he'd given a solid shake of the head and flung his hand about in their direction. Something about him must have clicked with Brittany, because in the next second, she wasn't holding on nearly as tight, and Santana was sure she'd heard her laughing.

"But how did they get in, I saw you lock the door when we left, you specifically said you didn't want tourists getting in," Martha pointed out.

"Yes," he nodded to her. "Yes, I did lock the door," he looked up at the large column sprouting from the console, with an air not unlike accusation. "Are we letting in strays now, is that what we're doing?"

"Who's he talking to?" Brittany mumbled to Santana.

"Maybe we should start over," Martha took a step forward, deciding these were after all a couple of innocent teenage girls and would require a more reassuring approach. "My name is Martha… Martha Jones, and this is the Doctor," she pointed over her shoulder.

"Doctor who?" Brittany dared to ask.

"Just that, just the Doctor. You'll get used to it," Martha nodded. The Doctor cleared his throat. "So, how DID you get in here?"

"We got bored," Brittany replied.

"We were with a group, a trip with our school," Santana clarified. "Our guide was five seconds from putting us to sleep."

"I think I did sleep," Brittany added.

"We thought about just walking around for a bit, and then she saw the box. It was kind of out of place, I guess, and she opened the door. We didn't think anything by it, we didn't know it would be… well… all of this, I mean there were other rooms back there, how…"

"So you just wandered in?" the Doctor interrupted.

"Wouldn't you?" Santana frowned at him.

"He would. He has," Martha agreed, staring back at the Doctor, who was suddenly very interested with the console. Just then, the TARDIS gave another shake, not so violent as to throw them off their feet, but enough to make them remember the previous shake.

"Okay, what's that?" Santana asked.

"That…" Martha started, realizing now the one thing, the very crucial piece of information that had suddenly slipped away the moment they'd spotted the girls: they were in flight. They had left Earth, had left the year 2008… with the girls. "I'm sorry, I never got your names."

"I'm Brittany, that's Santana."

"Right, well…" Martha started, but then the Doctor had come along and nudged her away from the girls so they could talk.

"Don't go and get attached, I'm taking them home, the sooner they're gone, the less…"

"Doctor, we can't. What about Brannigan?" He stared at her, the debate playing itself across his face before he looked to the girls, back to Martha, and then the girls again. Rather than to answer her, he'd stepped up toward the girls, straightening his suit. The girls looked like they were half a second from taking a step back.

"Let's make one thing clear, as soon as this is done, I am taking you straight home, understood?" They didn't move, but they nodded, so he smiled. "Good, so as Martha has just told you, I am the Doctor, hello," he bowed his head. "Now, we don't have much time, because we will be landing soon…"

"Landing?" Brittany asked.

"Things you'll need to know, let's see… This place, this box you've wandered into, it's no ordinary box, is it? You already know it isn't, but you don't know why, so I'll tell you… This is my ship. It's called the TARDIS. Space, time, you name it…"

"And you chose the Grand Canyon?" Santana frowned.

"With good reason," the Doctor looked just shy of stung.

"You don't seriously expect us to believe this stuff?"

"Ah, this one needs convincing," the Doctor took a step back. "Fine, go ahead, try and walk out, please," he indicated the door.

"Come on, Britt," Santana took her hand and hurried for the door as though she expected either of them to try and grab hold. She pulled one door open… and nearly fell right out into space, would have, too, if Brittany hadn't had a hold of her hand and pulled her back. They stood in the doorway, frozen, hand in hand… They were not at the Grand Canyon anymore.

"Convinced yet?" the Doctor called out to them. Brittany turned around, smiling. Santana was still in too much of a shock to have any sort of reaction.

"How come you have a spaceship?" Brittany asked them.

"Not me, just him," Martha explained. "I'm human like you." That snapped Santana out of it.

"What do you mean, like us? Then what's he?" she pointed to the Doctor.

"Alien, good kind… No probes," Martha promised.

"Probes?" the Doctor repeated, but then had to focus on the controls. "Woah, that's enough." With one last tremor, they had stopped.

"We got a call from an old friend," Martha told the girls. "He needed the Doctor's help, so here we are. Just stay with us and everything will be alright."

"And where… where are we?" Santana asked.

"The city of New New York," the Doctor ushered them out the door, and Santana and Brittany froze, looking around in amazement.

"This is so much better than the tour," Brittany breathed.

"Long way from the Motorway I see," the Doctor looked, too, noticing the changes.

"How long do you think it's been?" Martha asked, remembering the last time they'd been there.

"Doctor?" a voice called, and they turned. "Doctor!" The man that came toward them, to Brittany's wonder and Santana's shock, was a cat. He reached them and quickly put his arms around the Doctor. "Never in my life… What brings you back to our city?" The Doctor frowned.

"You called… We came."

"Call you? I'm afraid you're mistaken, Doctor, I would have remembered."

TO BE CONTINUED (FRIDAY)


	4. Memories of When

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**4. Memories of When**

_March 2012 – Lima, Ohio_

A week had passed since Artie and the others had learned of Santana and Brittany and their adventures with their third known incarnation of the Doctor, and all had been fairly calm in the halls of McKinley, until one morning they saw that Ginny Harrison had returned as their substitute, if only for a short three-day stint. Her arrival had done for the ever widening group what it always did: it put them on alert.

"Look, you guys do whatever you want, but I'm going to go and ask her what she's doing here," Santana would declare as she stood at her locker with Brittany, Artie, Puck, and Sugar.

"No, you can't!" Sugar was the first to speak out, with a surprisingly determined tone, and Artie had been so surprised and grateful he'd nearly turned to her and thanked her, but he held his tongue.

"Why not?"

"Because… Because we don't know… why she's here," Sugar struggled to come up with her answer, but then nodded, satisfied, once it was out.

"Yeah, and how do you think we're going to find out, by staring at her?" Santana countered.

"We could distract her and look through her stuff," Brittany offered, and Santana looked to her in agreement; Puck was starting to look interested, too.

"No!" Sugar and Artie had both countered at once. They looked to each other, and Sugar nodded to him: you take it.

"Look, I know it's annoying to stand back, believe me, I've been in this a lot longer than you."

"She's not going to be here long, then what are you going to do when she leaves?" Santana asked.

"Wait until she gets back," Artie shrugged.

"What is that going to accomplish?" Santana sounded even more annoyed.

"Probably not a lot, but right now, I am begging you…"

"Look, you do your thing, I'll do mine. She's been going around here for all this time, there has to be a reason, and we need to know what it is."

With that, she'd shut her locker door and stomped off down the hall. Brittany gave them an apologetic look before trotting off behind the other girl.

"I better get to class," Puck sighed, moving off, leaving Sugar and Artie alone.

"What do we do now?" Sugar asked. Artie looked up at her, blinking.

"I don't know, I'll keep trying, don't worry about it." Sugar gave a small nod and turned to leave. "Hey, are you okay?" Sugar turned back.

"Why?"

"I don't know, you just… Never mind," he finally smiled and shook his head.

"See you, Artie," she bowed her head before leaving.

He wasn't wrong if he thought there was something on her mind, but she couldn't tell him what it was. If she did, she would have to tell him a lot more, and she knew she wasn't supposed to.

The thing was, while Santana and Brittany had been telling their story the week before, something happened. She remembered something. It would have been so small of a memory, except that it opened up the way for something… unexpected. All at once, she had remembered being six years old, being Padra, hidden away at Marella's Inn on the Great Jade Moon. She remembered the woman who'd sat with her a while, the one who'd disappeared…

"_My name is Gemma. It's very nice to meet you. Your name is Padra, is that right?"_

"_Yes."_

"_That's a beautiful name, do you know where it comes from?"_

"_My mother says it's a kind of sugar, the sweetest. Toh, he calls me 'sweet child.'"_

"_Well, I'll see you around, sugar."_

She could see her face now, it was Miss Harrison, and her name really had been Gemma, everything Artie and Puck had said was true. She'd believed everything else, about the Doctor, of course, but until then she wasn't completely sold on the Miss Harrison… the Gemma part. The woman in the inn, that was how she'd even thought about it, her new name. It was because of her she called herself Sugar now. She didn't know why she was there, but what if it meant she was in trouble?

X

Artie had waited until they'd split up. He knew he wasn't going to convince Santana, which meant someone else was going to have to, and he didn't know of anyone else better to get Santana to do something other than Brittany. He knew they didn't have the same class next, so he just had to wait until Santana went to hers and he could approach the blonde. It might mean he'd be late to his own class, but he was willing to risk it.

"Brittany!" he called to her, not so loud in case Santana was still close enough to hear.

"Hey…" she replied.

"I need your help. You have to talk to Santana and convince her not to go after Gemma." She looked uneasy and he could all but hear her go 'I don't know, Artie, Santana said…' "I tried to explain it, but Santana won't listen. Look, I know who she is, and you all do, too, but she's not actually coming to us about it, is she?" _Well, she told me, but that's beside the point._

"Well, no…"

"Then there has to be a reason, right?"

"Maybe…"

"If you guys go after her and try to make her tell you, it could ruin everything. It's been months already, if we wreck it now, it might be catastrophic." The word had done its job in getting Brittany to see what he was getting at.

"We can't let that happen," she shook her head. It only made it easier that he was almost completely telling her the truth.

"Santana won't listen to me, you know that. But she'll listen if you tell her. Can you do that, please?" The blonde stood there for a moment, thinking to herself, but then she finally nodded.

"Okay, I'll talk to her."

"Thanks, Britt."

TO BE CONTINUED (SUNDAY)


	5. New New New New

_A/N: Sorry for the delay, technical difficulties..._

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**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**5. New New New New…**

_Sometime in New New York…_

The Doctor had not been able to get enough of a word in to ask the questions he meant to ask as Brannigan led them back to his house. But then seeing as the cat man kept on talking, it was only a matter of time before at least some of his questions found answers.

In the meantime, Martha was keeping an eye on the girls as they followed behind, making sure neither of them wandered off. The first one, Santana, had too many questions herself to even bother going anywhere, but then there was the other, Brittany, who was in such awe of their surroundings that Santana was walking and holding on to her hand at the same time, pulling her forward.

"So… he's a cat," had been the dark-haired girl's primary concern.

"Believe me, with the things I've seen, a man that's a cat is the last thing I'd worry about," Martha chuckled.

"What things?" Santana asked.

"Giant head…" Martha extended her arms.

"Right," Santana frowned. She was going to need more convincing than her friend; that much they'd figured out early enough. "Okay, so where are we?"

"This is the city of New New York," Martha informed her, remembering when the Doctor had first brought her here.

"Get out," Santana had never looked so genuinely impressed.

"It is," Martha nodded. "I've been here before, actually, you know, giant head and all. That's when we met Brannigan the first time," she pointed up to the two men in front. Now that she thought about it, really looked at him and the city around them, she had to wonder how much time had gone by. So much had changed, since the motorway, and Brannigan had changed, too. She wondered if he aged like a cat or like a man…

The Doctor would have been able to tell her a solid fourteen years had gone by, but then they had reached Brannigan's home, and everything else would have to wait.

For having spent so many years in the confined space of their car, Brannigan and his wife Valerie had now made a home for themselves and their children that spoke volumes on first sight already Brannigan and Valerie had carried on this sense of minimalism; their children had other ideas. Little by little, the boys and girls the Doctor had last seen as kittens in a basket began to emerge.

There were six of them in all, three boys and three girls. The Doctor, Martha, and the stowaway girls were introduced to Alexander, Alfred, and Allen, as well as Abigail, Alice, and Agnes, the last of which looked the most like their father. Santana looked slightly uncomfortable; Brittany was in heaven. The two girls had just been dispatched to go and spend time with the cat children, the better to give the Doctor and Martha a chance to talk to Brannigan alone and get answers, when the door opened and in walked Valerie.

"Brannigan?" they'd heard her calling.

"In here," he called back, turning to the visitors and holding his hand up as though to say 'be quiet, we'll surprise her.'

"I ran into the doctor on the way in, he…" she was saying as she walked in, then stopped dead in her tracks. "Doctor?"

"What do you mean you ran into him, he's right here," Brannigan hooked his thumb back at him.

"No, that wasn't… I meant I ran into Dr. Benedict," she told him before turning back to the other man and the girl at his side. "You haven't changed at all, neither of you. How is that possible?"

"Oh, don't mind me, I don't even know what I'm doing here, carry on, you were talking about a doctor?" the Doctor nodded, signalling for the husband and wife to continue their conversation without him.

"Brilliant man, that Benedict," Brannigan piped in. "The things he's done for the city…" Valerie nudged him, a look in her eyes that didn't go unnoticed by the Doctor.

"Why don't you want him to say?" he asked the woman, who was trying to look normal again and failing in every way.

X

In the next room, the six cat children and the two human girls were not having the easiest time of interacting, not across the board. Santana was still not comfortable around them and that sentiment was not hidden in any way. This left half of the six too busy staring at her to bother with anything else, while one more was not taking any part in anything. The last two, the cats known as Agnes and Alfred, were looking to be of a mind with Brittany, who was fascinated by them. In return, the two cats welcomed the curiosity. Brittany learned the cats were fourteen years old, same as her and Santana, and that their mother was not a cat at all. She learned this and much else. Of Dr. Benedict, they said nothing.

X

"Do you know what I think?" the Doctor turned to Martha, his voice at normal volume, leaving Brannigan and Valerie to hear it all. "I think she doesn't want me to know about this man? I think deep down she doesn't want me looking into him because she knows I won't like what I find."

"Why?" Martha asked him, though her eyes darted back to Valerie, not too comfortable with the Doctor's game.

"Well you've met me, haven't you? What do I do when something gets my attention?"

"Right," she nodded. He wasn't mentioning how they'd ended up here in the first place, with Brannigan's call, which did not track at all with what they had found here, and she chose to believe it was intentional, so she didn't mention it either. If she was trying to think like the Doctor at this moment, it was possible they hadn't made it at the right time, that they were early, in which case any clue that came their way had to be looked into, to find what had really brought them here.

"Doctor," Valerie jumped back in, shaking her head. "Now, you are our guest, and we and our children owe you a great debt for what you did for us and all the others…"

"Well I don't know about a debt, exactly…"

"But you don't need to…"

"I very much need to, so come on then, let's see about this doctor."

TO BE CONTINUED (TUESDAY)


	6. Doctor Meet Doctor

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**6. Doctor Meet Doctor**

_Sometime in New New York_

Martha had been uncertain about leaving their stowaways back at the house with the Brannigan children, but the Doctor insisted they would be fine, as did Valerie. Though she still felt there was more motive beneath both of their assurances, she had eventually let it go. The four of them, the Doctor and Martha and the cat man and his wife did not have to walk on very far before they came across the man they were looking for. When Valerie had said that she'd run into him, it might have seemed as though this was an uncommon thing, happenstance, but both the Doctor and Martha soon began to think otherwise.

They could believe that the man was merely familiar with his surroundings, but he knew all those people he passed, their names, their families' names, and enough of the condition of their lives that he might have been the sole doctor of a very small town rather than one pitched at the heart of New New York. After some minor prodding, the Doctor was able to get some information about this Doctor Benedict and how he'd come to hold such a place among the people of the city.

Doctor Everett Wallace Benedict had come to New New York six years prior. What had brought him to the city initially might have simply been the prospect of seeing the expansion it was presently going through, the once great city reduced to so little now taking a new upswing… Only that 'up' turn had not come without a few dips back down, and one of those had been of an epidemic. Dr. Benedict had arrived right when the people were at their most desperate and volatile, with the sick doing their best to tend to their own and to themselves while the healthy did all they could to stay that way.

And he'd saved them all. Some would say he had single-handedly become their savior, others would say he had worked in conjunction with the already established system. One way or the other, the good doctor had become something of a hero, especially to those who had been struck by the illness and cured of it. Rather than leaving the city behind once everything was taken care of, Dr. Benedict had settled down in New New York, in his great big mansion.

He continued to interest himself in the people he had helped, whether they'd become ill or not, and the people continued to be interested in him, too. When they found out that he was not only a healer but a researcher, conducting experiments in hopes of developing more cures and treatments, the people of the city had become very keen to help him in any way they could. This included submitting themselves as test subjects to his varied experiments.

"Aren't these experiments dangerous?" Martha asked, frowning at the thought of these people going in on faith alone.

"Oh, there have been side effects, sure," Brannigan shrugged.

"But they get along fine," Valerie insisted. "It's for the greater good."

"And that was all you needed to hear, wasn't it?" the Doctor spoke to them, though his eyes never left the ambling physician.

"What kind of experiments are they?" Martha wondered aloud. The silence was heavy with possibilities: the possibility that they wouldn't dare give the answer, or the possibility that they did not know it.

"Why don't we ask him?" the Doctor held up his arm with a smile, beckoning the man forward as he had managed to catch his eye.

"Doctor, please," Valerie tried to stop him.

"If he's as good as you say he is, what's there to worry about?" the Doctor told her before stepping forward and extending his hand. "Dr. Benedict, is it? Heard loads about you and I only just got here." Dr. Benedict looked to be in his fifties, late on, not so jovial but not harsh looking either.

"Ah, it's the Brannigans," Dr. Benedict turned to the pair of them after he'd shaken the Doctor's hand. "You two will be new to the city, is that so…"

"That'll be the Doctor…"

"Smith. Doctor Smith, call me John if you like," the Doctor cut in. "And this is my, uh… my apprentice, name of Martha Jones. She'll best both of us someday," he nodded to the man, clapping Martha on the shoulder and leaving the girl so stunned for a moment she stayed quiet and didn't bother to wonder about the Smith situation.

"A pleasure to meet you both," said Dr. Benedict, and he did look glad of it, which might have made Valerie's claims that he should be left alone a bit easier to trust, but the Doctor still couldn't shake the feeling this man was the reason why they had been called in to help, one way or the other.

"Our friends here say you've been in New New York for a number of years already, is that right?"

"Conditions have certainly improved since I first arrived," Dr. Benedict looked around. "I would hope I contributed to some of that."

"By the way they go on about you, I dare say you have."

"Yes, well, was it all six of yours who were bedridden, and Mrs. Brannigan as well," Benedict looked to the pair, though the Doctor could see his gaze turning to the cat man more than his wife.

"All the little ones and my Valerie, yes, and he nursed them back, every one," Brannigan confirmed, his hand going around his wife's shoulders.

"Well it was a pleasure meeting you Dr. Smith, Miss Jones," Benedict shook both of their hands, did the same with the others, lingering again on Brannigan, and then he went on his way.

"Now you've met him, will you forget him?" Valerie asked the Doctor, but the Time Lord had kept looking at the other man as he retreated, and when he did, he saw the doctor approach a man and a young girl, the man's daughter by the look of the pair. The girl could not have been more than twelve, and to the common observer she might have seemed fine, but the Doctor looked at her and she felt… wrong.

"Better get a move on, it's nearly time to eat, and the young ones will not do well with delay," Brannigan declared. "Doctor, Miss Martha, you are our guests. This way now."

TO BE CONTINUED (FRIDAY)


	7. Hide & Go Seek

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**7. Hide & Go Seek**

_Sometime in New New York_

It hadn't taken too long for Santana to convince Brittany it would be a good idea for them to follow the Brannigan cats and get to explore this futuristic city of New New York. The Doctor had told them to stay, which had only worked for so long before boredom had become a better incentive not to listen and to do what they wanted to do. There was still some amount of tension between Santana and half of those cats, but the other half was quickly warming up to the blonde, and it helped.

The Doctor and Martha were still in the dining room, talking to the cat man and his wife, after they'd all eaten, and they had no clue when Santana, Brittany, and the Brannigan children snuck out.

Something about showing the girls around the city and seeing their amazement at things that seemed completely normal to the rest of them had done wonders to get the cats relax some more around the pair of them, and Santana couldn't deny she was experiencing the same thing on their end. The further they went, seeing both the city and its people, she saw that cat people were only one such variety of strange and unimaginable creatures around them. If anything, Brittany and her were the ones who stuck out.

They went into this shop and that one, where the girls wished they had money to buy some of the things they saw, even if they knew they might not get to show any of it to the people back home. There were vendors and shoppers all around, signs on the walls that Brittany took some care to read as they went.

"If you meet anyone that tries to sell you some kind of mood, just tell them to walk away. You don't want to get mixed up with that lot. They were outlawed ages ago but they still try and move their stock to unsuspecting tourists," said Abigail.

"We're not tourists," Santana frowned.

"You look like one though," the girl pointed out. "Be careful, that's all."

The next shop they had gone into had been massive. The way Allen went on about it, between all the floors and the displays, it could take someone an entire day to see everything it had to offer. ("They've even got rooms if you want to spend the night. They serve breakfast and everything.") Somewhere in the whirlwind of it all, the group had split. Santana went off with Abigail and Alexander one way, Alice and Allen went another, and Brittany, Agnes, and Alfred went down a third path.

"What are those?" Brittany asked as they came off a lift on to the 56th floor. They had found themselves in front of a display of strange sort of chairs, strange to her at least.

"Car seats, for the motorway nostalgic out there," Alfred shrugged. Whether Brittany had heard him or not was hard to tell, as the blonde had already moved on, her curiosity taking her elsewhere.

"I could get this for my mother, her birthday is coming up!" Brittany picked up a round thing from a shelf and showed it to the two cats.

"Do you know what it is?" Agnes asked, smirking.

"No idea," Brittany shook her head, putting it back with a sigh.

"Hey, you three, no loitering," a tall man approached them.

"We're just shopping," Alfred looked to his sister and Brittany, who picked up the round thing, to appear as though she was thinking of buying it.

"How much?" she asked.

"Put it down and come with me," the tall man persisted.

"Do you work here?" Brittany asked, looking at him. All the 'stranger danger' warnings her parents had given her were flooding back to her.

"Do I need to call security?" the man looked as though he'd gotten taller in the last five seconds.

"Brittany, just put it back," Agnes warned, and she did as told. The man pointed, and the three walked, well across the floor, toward a closed door. The man stepped in front of them and opened it.

"In here," he told them. They looked to each other, debating.

"I don't like this," Brittany whispered to Agnes.

"Take my hand and don't let go," she whispered back. When she did, Agnes gave a nod. "Alfred, run!" she shouted, and she took off, trailing Brittany behind her.

They never made it to the end of the row. The tall man had help, and they came from the room now, grasping the runners and slipping something under their noses, which knocked them out on the spot.

"Take them back inside, prepare to transport them," the tall man said.

"What about the others?" asked one of the others.

"Those will do for now. Dr. Benedict will tell us if he needs more."

X

"No, I swear they said they were going to fifty-six," Allen said as he and his siblings emerged from the lift with Santana on their heels.

"We should go down to the lobby," Alexander told them. "That's what we're supposed to do, isn't it? They'll find us that way."

"Better that than to spend a whole day going from floor to floor," Santana frowned, hoping she might see a familiar blond head passing by.

"They have screens here, mostly for parents with misplaced children, but we might be able to find them. We come here all the time, they'll have us on file," Alice went to one and pressed her palm to a pad.

"_Welcome, Alice Brannigan."_

"I'm looking for my sister Agnes, and my brother Alfred." Almost as soon as she said their names, their pictures appeared.

"_Floor 56."_

"See, they are here, come on," Abigail led them away from the lifts. They went through every aisle, but there was no sign of any of them. Alexander had gone and stayed next to the lifts, sticking to his previous point of returning to a familiar place in the event that they might come by while the others were looking.

They spent two hours searching floor fifty-six, but it was useless. They weren't there. What was worse was that the screen persisted to claim that both Agnes and Alfred, and Brittany by association, were on this floor.

"Something's wrong, isn't it?" Alexander asked his siblings as they returned to him. Allen shrugged.

"We need to go home and tell Mom and Dad, they'll know what to do, them and the Doctor."

TO BE CONTINUED (SUNDAY)


	8. Mask of Benevolence

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**8. Mask of Benevolence**

_Sometime in New New York_

Now that they were actually starting to notice them, it seemed the good doctor's former subjects were all over the place. Some would display more noticeable symptoms, making them easier to find, while sometimes the Doctor would only see them and get a strong and undeniable feeling. He would say nothing aloud, but he would tap Martha's shoulder or meet her eye and he would direct her to look. She was counting them out just as he was, he could tell, and he didn't know whether she was starting to notice the same patterns he was, but he had a feeling she was.

They'd gone out after lunch, both of them insisting despite Valerie and Brannigan attempting to steer them away from the entire situation that they needed to see more. At one time or another, they were going to have to stop tiptoeing around what they knew and speak the truth. Knowing how Benedict had been so vital to saving both Valerie and the children after he came to New New York, the Doctor was not without sympathy and understanding, truly. But that wouldn't stop him from seeing things through. He knew he had been called here for a reason, and until he could let his old friends in on this, he had to keep digging.

He didn't have to dig much further. They were just coming back to the house when they swarmed in, four feline boys and girls and one human girl, all of them alarmed. They were all speaking at once, so fast and loud that there was no making sense of any of them.

"Quiet!" the Doctor's voice broke over the din, silencing every last one of them. "You," he pointed to Santana. "Speak."

"They're gone, we looked for them, Brittany, and…" she looked back to the cats, still trying to remember all their names.

"Agnes and Alfred," Alexander volunteered.

"We looked, we swear we did, for hours, and they were nowhere!" Abigail jumped in.

"The screen, tell them about the screen," Alexander nudged his sister.

"What screen?" Martha asked.

"You took them to the General Twenty-Four, didn't you?" Valerie frowned. "They're not from here, why would you do that? They must have gotten lost." Again, Alexander nudged Abigail.

"We ran the locator, it said they were on fifty-six, we looked and we didn't find them, and it still said fifty-six. They wouldn't hide. That means…"

"What if it's him?" Santana cut in, looking at the Doctor, the only one she could believe would be able to help her get her friend back at this point. "That guy you don't like."

"Now, hold on…" the Doctor started to reply.

"It's not the first time they've gone off," Valerie shook her head. "Last year, they charged themselves a couple of beds, didn't come back until morning."

"Valerie…" Brannigan looked at his wife; he wasn't as convinced as she was that it wasn't what it looked like. He was worried.

"Fine then, let's go and have a look. I'll find them, give them a talking to, and it'll be sorted," Valerie stepped to the four of her children still at hand and guided them off back away from the house, the way they'd come from. "What are you waiting for?" she called back without turning. Martha moved toward Santana and they walked after the others together, with the Doctor and Brannigan taking up the rear.

"Doctor," the man took hold of his arm for a moment, stopping him. "I know who you are, I know what you've done and what you can do. That man Benedict came in like… well, like you did, all those years ago, and changed our lives. I owe him my family, but I will not give a blind eye if they are in trouble. Do you think he has to do with my Agnes and Alfred disappearing with your young friend?" The Doctor looked back to the rest of the pack, which was quickly distancing itself from them. He signalled to Brannigan that they should catch up.

"I've been vague and I apologize, but you see I didn't come here on a social call, I came at your call."

"I don't understand, I… I've made no such call, why would I?"

"You haven't, not yet. It seems I've… arrived early. You haven't had need of me…"

"So it might be that I do now?" Brannigan took a breath; the Doctor could practically feel him tensing by his side, now that he had as close to confirmation as he could get that his son and daughter were at risk.

They made it to the General Twenty-Four, where Valerie went with Abigail and Alice one way, Brannigan went with Alexander and Allen, and the Doctor lead Martha and Santana straight up to the fifty-sixth floor. Santana showed where the cats had attempted to locate their missing siblings. The Doctor pulled out the sonic screwdriver, motioning for the two girls to keep a look out if anyone should start wondering what he was up to.

"What's that thing?" Santana asked Martha, sneaking a look back.

"It's a, uh…" Martha hesitated. She knew that just saying 'screwdriver' would not inspire understanding in the girl, but it wasn't the time for long chats and all. "It's a tool, the Doctor uses it for anything from opening doors to scanning computers." _And about half a million other things in between._ For now it was all the girl needed to know. Santana gave a short nod, and Martha returned it, hoping it had satisfied her curiosity, but then the Doctor was muttering to himself behind them, and she could see the girl was finding it constantly harder not to know what was going on.

"Did you find them yet?" Santana called while trying to keep her voice low. If the Doctor had heard her, he was not reacting, which only unnerved her. Eventually she walked back up to his side, crossing her arms before herself and staring at him until he finally paused and turned his head toward her. "Well?"

"Nothing so far," he replied, and staring between the time lord and the fourteen-year-old girl, Martha wasn't entirely sure who was in charge anymore.

"We wouldn't be in this mess if I hadn't taken her away back at the Canyon," Santana went on, and the Doctor looked at her, seeing the concern beneath her scowl.

"Wherever she is, I, we… we'll find her, alright?" he told her, his tone kind and encouraging. Santana stared at him for a moment, then quietly walked back to where she'd been standing. She didn't have to stand there very long that the Doctor suddenly sprang from the screen, looking around.

"I think I've got…" he frowned, thinking. "Well, it's definitely something, and I've got it, so… this way," they headed back on to the lift, down to the ground floor and out of the General Twenty-Four. He walked, Martha and Santana followed. He was going fast enough that there was not much need to try and ask him what he'd found; it was quicker to go with him and find out.

The chase lasted much longer than they would have anticipated, but they couldn't stop, and they carried on, until the Doctor stopped, looked at the screwdriver in his hand, then turned and went another way. At long last, he stopped, and the other two stopped, at either side of him. They had reached a gated mansion property, standing out among the rest of the New New York landscape.

"Are they here?" Santana asked, out of breath.

"Trail got us here, and look there," he pointed to the top of the entrance gate, which like the rest of the mansion already appeared heavily guarded. Martha and Santana looked up to what he'd pointed to, three great letters forged into the metal: EWB. Everett Wallace Benedict.

TO BE CONTINUED (TUESDAY)


	9. A Helping Hand

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**9. A Helping Hand**

_March 2012 – Lima, Ohio_

To say that Gemma was nervous as she walked up to the house was not even scratching the surface. She knew it was the right move, but after what had happened not that long ago, it really felt like they might have been imposing on the girl.

She rang the bell, and a few seconds later, a blond woman opened the door. "Yes?"

"Mrs. Fabray?" Gemma asked, and when the woman nodded, she let out a breath. _Here goes nothing._ "My name is Ginny Harrison, I…" Judy Fabray had gasped. Of course, she would have heard the name, and not just from her time spent as a substitute teacher at her daughter's school.

"Oh, it's you, I… I've been trying to reach you, but I couldn't… Please, come in," she stepped aside, and Gemma walked in. As soon as the door had been shut, Judy had reached out and pulled the younger woman into her arms. "I don't know what would have happened if you hadn't been there."

"I only called for help, I…" Gemma hesitated before closing the hug around her.

"But if you hadn't done it, who knows how long it would have been before someone found her there," Judy Fabray wouldn't let her off the hook from being properly thanked.

"I don't want to impose, but I was wondering if I might be able to talk with Quinn. I know she was discharged from the hospital…"

"We might have stayed, but the doctor insisted I could take her home. I'll still have to take her in every so often, but she will recover faster from home," the woman nodded confidently, before leading the substitute teacher over to the guest room which, being on the first floor, had been rearranged to act as Quinn's bedroom. It would be some time before they could see into a more permanent change, and it was made clear to Gemma just by looking at the room that the blond girl did not want anything looking permanent: she was aiming to get her room back, one way or the other.

Maybe Judy's home care recovery theory wasn't so far-fetched. The girl Gemma found sitting up on her bed looked a lot better than what she remembered from the crash. She was reading what looked to be a textbook and had some notebooks on the rolling table slid in front of her.

"Quinn, sweetheart, you have a visitor." When she looked up, her eyes quickly travelled to the substitute. She knew her face well enough, and now knowing her as the first responder who had been by her side after her accident, she put her textbook down. The entire scene wasn't unlike her visit to a young Artie Abrams, and that similarity was not lost on her.

"Hi," she cleared her throat.

"I should check on dinner," Judy looked back over her shoulder. "You'll eat with us? I insist."

"I… Sure," she nodded. Judy smiled and left the room. Gemma went and sat by Quinn's bedside. "How are you feeling?"

"Less and less like I ran headlong into a brick wall, although…" she looked down at herself, her legs, unmoving before her. "It's not a scraped knee, so I guess I can't expect to get better in a day. But I will be better."

"I don't doubt it for a second," Gemma smiled. "Listen, there's something I need to tell you about that day, when you had your accident. But I should probably precede this with a few other things. One of those is that I'm not a substitute teacher. Another is that my name is not Ginny Harrison, it's Gemma Lucas. And the third is that I know a second before that truck hit your car, you were not in your car, or in the year two thousand and twelve for that matter."

Quinn stared at her, and Gemma could see her tensing up, apprehensively. Only days ago, she had been with the Doctor, it was all fresh in her memories, which made it no wonder that she would be this guarded.

"I don't know what you…"

"You were with the Doctor, on the TARDIS, I know," Gemma went on.

"Alright…" Quinn spoke slowly. "So maybe you're really not a teacher. But why should I trust you or believe anything you say, about… about him."

"The one you met, that would have been the Eleventh," Gemma nodded to herself. "Tall, sort of… giraffe like, wore a bow tie," she touched to her throat. "Talked a lot with his hands that one, like he couldn't stand still, could he?" Gemma asked, not only mimicking the motion of his hands but the tone of his voice as well. Quinn stared at her, halfway between amused and dumbstruck.

"That's… uncanny," she admitted.

"I do what I can," Gemma shrugged. "Quinn, listen now, because I have no idea when your mother will come again, and there's a reason I waited until she left to speak to you," she gave a pointed look. "The Doctor sent me to look after you."

"How do I know you're telling the truth? You could be after him, trying to get at him through me," she frowned, and Gemma smiled to herself. Whatever time they'd spent together, Quinn and the Doctor, he had already instilled that attachment that turned to protectiveness in his companions; Gemma knew exactly where she was coming from.

"I guess you're going to have to decide that for yourself." Quinn stared at her for a while, pondering, but it didn't take long for Gemma to see the mistrust melt away from her.

"So… he found out about what happened to me, did he?"

"You could say that," Gemma briefly averted her eyes at this.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Quinn didn't miss it.

"Well, that means that it wasn't coincidence I was on the side of that road when the collision happened. I was sent to stand there and wait for it to happen, so I could call in for help," she revealed. Quinn listened to this, and Gemma could see her working it all out in her head.

"Sent… by the Doctor?" she asked, and Gemma nodded. "But that would mean he knew it would happen and didn't stop it. That thing, the manipulator… Did it show it to…" Gemma shook her head, stopping her.

"You misunderstand. The Doctor knew what would happen when he sent you back."

TO BE CONTINUED (FRIDAY)


	10. Experimental Introductions

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**10. Experimental Introductions**

_Sometime in New New York_

It wasn't the first time Brittany dreamed of cats, and it probably wouldn't be the last, only this time was different. This time the cats in her dream were tall as she was, and they had clothes, and they could talk.

It had been a fairly pleasant dream, too, so it wasn't hard to figure out when she wasn't dreaming anymore, because as she started to wake, so did her headache.

"Ow…" she muttered, reaching up to her head.

"Don't try to move too fast now," a girl's voice spoke nearby. "It'll make dizzy."

"I'm already there," Brittany complained. She didn't try to move, though she did open her eyes. When she did, she spotted two cats staring down at her and she startled. "Wait, you're real?" she looked from one to the other, and then it started coming back to her, the cats, the alien, the ship… the store, and the bad feeling that had made them run, right before everything had gone dark. "Where are we?" she asked; this was not the store anymore.

"Don't panic, we're… Well, it looks like a cage," the boy cat, Alfred, she remembered, revealed.

"It's a cell," a new voice spoke, and Brittany sat up and turned, feeling her world lurch left and right for a moment before she saw the bars around them, and beyond the bars another row of the metal things, keeping others penned in, men and women and even a couple of children. Not all of them looked human, but some of them did. _The Doctor man, he looks human and he's not, so how do I know?_

"Mr. Arpen?" Agnes crawled on her knees over to the edge of the bars.

"I've seen you around the library," the man observed her carefully.

"Agnes Brannigan," she introduced herself. "I was wondering why you weren't there anymore. Have you been here all this time? It's been weeks, months."

"Has it?" the man nodded to himself. "Sometimes it's hard to keep track, but then…" he came closer to his bars, into the light, and Agnes let out a shocked sort of hiss. She had recognized him by his voice, his stature, but she hadn't seen his face properly. Now that she did, she was stunned to see his eyes had gone milky white, almost like… "It's been harder to know day from night, you see." After a moment, he laughed, finding his own joke clever enough.

"What happened to you?" Alfred asked.

"Side effect," the man shrugged.

"Side effect of what?" Agnes was getting so close to the bars, her face was becoming squeezed as far as it could get between two bars. "What is this place?"

"Agnes, what happened to your neck?" Brittany asked, and now the cat girl looked back at her.

"My neck? I don't…" she reached to it, and she felt it, something stuck to her fur. Whatever was underneath, as soon as she pressed there, it hurt, and she pulled her hand back. She looked to her brother, turning him about so she could see, while Brittany reached to her own neck. They were all the same, a sensitive area, covered by a bandage.

"That'll be the sampling," a woman called up from another cell. "First they take you, then they sample you, then they look you up."

"Who's they?" Brittany asked. The woman stared at him like she thought the answer was as evident as could be, and just as soon her face shifted into uncertainty and downright ignorance. She looked frightened at her not knowing.

"It's alright, Erlin," a small girl in the cell next to the woman's reached between the bars and tapped her shoulder. There was something strange about her. The closer they had the chance to observe her, it seemed evident that, though she was small in stature, she wasn't a child, couldn't be. They could see the side of her face, and it was old, wrinkled, and her hair was gray, streaked with white, and dry like it would break if you even touched it. Only then she would turn, and they would see what was on the other side of her face. That side was smoother, softer, as close to a child's as one might get, and even then, the features surrounded in sleeker but very much white hair might have belonged to someone closer to their twenties. Her posture was all wrong. She stared at the cats and the girl across the way from them. "She has trouble remembering," the old girl explained. "My name is Risha, who are you?"

"Agnes… Brannigan. This is my brother, Alfred, and that's Brittany. Only met her today."

"Well, Agnes Brannigan, you are now the scientific property of Doctor Everett Wallace Benedict. If he brought you here, then like as not, it means he has no intention of letting you go again." There was a weighted silence, and as they looked around, the trio of new arrivals found faces who had been exactly in their position at one time or another; they remembered what it was like, the moment when they realized it was what their lives were shaping up to become.

"The Doctor was right?" Brittany mumbled to herself, crawling to the back of the cell, blinking. "He was right, wasn't he? About that man…"

"It can't be," Alfred shook his head, staring back at his sister.

"This is a joke, isn't it? To try and scare us?" Agnes held to the bars, hoisting herself up to her feet. She was still too dizzy, and she half stumbled and half slid back to the ground.

"Sweetheart, this is no joke, and the sooner you understand this, the more likely you'll be to make it through," said a second man, with a bandage around his head, which was looking oddly shaped. They might have liked to think he was of a species with particularly lumpy head, but they had a feeling he was not, that this was a new condition.

"Make it through?" Alfred asked, his voice trembling.

"They'll be looking at your sampling now," the woman Erlin nodded. "Then the doctor will know what he will do to you."

TO BE CONTINUED (SUNDAY)


	11. The Good & the Bad

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**11. The Good & The Bad**

_March 2012 – Lima, Ohio_

Quinn had told her to leave. There had been no other thought able to get through her head except for how she desperately wanted Gemma, Ginny, whoever she was, to get out of her room, her house, anywhere that was near her. She was feeling the need to cry or shout and she didn't want her to see it. Her mother had come up, wondering what had happened. Quinn simply said she was feeling tired and wanted to be alone, so her mother took this in stride and let her be, too.

It had been some time after that before she could start to think straight and really think about what she'd been told. The worst thing was that, as much as he wanted to hate them both, Gemma and the Doctor, it had been a remarkably short time before she had to admit to herself maybe she had overreacted. Yes, the fact that the Doctor had known what would happen to her and let it happen was not something she liked to think about, but then the more she did think about it…

She remembered those last moments, before she had gone back to the moment she had been taken away from. She remembered his face, all of it… He was scared, concerned… He didn't want to let her go, that much she could believe. He'd done it anyway though, hadn't he? He wouldn't do that, not unless it was the only way. She had to go back. He had to let it happen. It would have taken incredible amounts of personal strength and level-headed thinking, to do what had to be done rather than what he wanted to do. And she wasn't dead, was she? She couldn't walk, but she would again, someday soon, she knew. There had to be a reason, for all of it.

After she'd had time enough to calm down and get past her emotions, she had noticed something on the table by her bed, a scrap of paper. When she picked it up, she saw the handwriting and recognized it a piece of homework the substitute had corrected for her a while back. On it was scribbled a phone number, and a message.

_For when you'll want to talk. –G_

Had she guessed it would go so poorly before ever showing up? Quinn sighed and reached for her phone, dialling the number from the paper before slipping it into the drawer of the table next to her. When Gemma answered, Quinn didn't apologize, though she asked if she might come back and talk some more.

The next day, Gemma came, as requested, and once again Judy left them alone, although there was more uncertainty in her eyes, like she wondered what had happened the day before and was all but certain it had to do with the woman who was visiting for the second time now. Before Gemma could speak, Quinn had taken hold of the conversation.

"What are you doing at McKinley? Tell the truth," Quinn stared her in the eye. Gemma breathed out, sitting herself more at ease.

"I guess you could say I'm here as a favor to the Doctor," she replied.

"What kind of favor?" Quinn fired back another question.

"Okay, before I go any further, I need to explain something else to you first, so it'll make the rest of this conversation much easier. The thing about the Doctor is… How much has he told you about who and what he is?" Quinn thought back, seeing the boy that wasn't a boy, Dex, remembering what he used to call the Doctor.

"Time Lord," Quinn spoke aloud, and Gemma nodded. "There was another alien, he said… something about him having changed his face, and the Doctor said that he had, a few times…"

"Oh, good, that should make my job easier," Gemma sounded relieved. "Did the word 'regeneration' ever come up?" she asked. Quinn shook her head. "It's easy enough to understand, less so to experience, that's what she told me."

"She?" Quinn wasn't following anymore.

"When the Doctor is about to die, there's this thing he can do, called regeneration. New body, new face, new person, same memories… The Doctor's had twelve different faces that I know of, although I've only seen a few of them. That'll be important for something else later. The point is that my Doctor, the face it has, the body… He is now a she, that is, the Doctor is a woman." Quinn blinked, remembering the tall, awkward sort of guy she had known and trying to picture him as a woman. "Do you believe me?"

"I… I've seen a lot of odd things since I met him, so… Why would I not believe this one?"

"You have no idea how hard it is sometimes not to trip up. My Doctor, from what I've been told, all of her other faces have been male, this is the first, and I have to be careful, you know… pronouns and all. She sent me back here, to this time and place, in order to help set some things on the right path, set them in motion, because something is coming. Something is going to happen, in a few months' time, and when it does, some things need to have happened on this end. That's why I came to you, and it's important that you tell no one. Can you promise me that?"

"For the Doctor, sure. I'm still making my mind up about you," she allowed a small smile.

"I can work with that," Gemma smiled back.

"So the Doctor needs my help?" Quinn asked, and Gemma nodded. "But I…" she looked down at herself. "Does this mean I'll walk again?" she asked, hopeful.

"I don't know," Gemma replied. "Even if you're not walking right now, it doesn't mean you can't help."

"No, I know that," Quinn promised. She looked at Gemma, considering what little information she currently had to go on. All she really needed to know though was that the Doctor needed her. "What do I have to do?"

TO BE CONTINUED (TUESDAY)


	12. What Can You Trust?

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**12. What Can You Trust?**

_Sometime in New New York_

Rather than going back to the General Twenty-Four and potentially searching to find the Brannigans for hours and days, the Doctor had returned to their house with Martha and Santana in tow. They had first gone and found the TARDIS again, relocating it to their friends' home. The Doctor had been forced to take off again and redo the landing after he had opened the door and his knees collided with the sofa before be tipped over it. Santana had laughed, Martha had kept herself from joining in, and the Doctor had climbed back over the sofa and into the TARDIS.

But now everything was settled, and when Brannigan, Valerie, Allen, Abigail, Alice, and Alexander returned, they found Martha and Santana waiting, sat on the sofa, while the Doctor was inside the TARDIS, looking into some things.

The children had been impressed with the ship, having never seen it but having heard tales of it their entire lives. Martha had been glad to lend herself as tour guide, the better to allow the Doctor to speak with the parents.

"It's him," he told Brannigan and Valerie. "Dr. Benedict, he has the children, your two and my stowaway, down at his mansion," he declared. Valerie made no sound; her husband hissed. "You need to trust me this time," the Doctor gave Valerie a look and she turned her eyes back to him.

"You're not leaving me much of a choice, are you?"

"Would Agnes and Alfred disappear off like this, really?" the Doctor spoke to her reason, and for as much as she'd defended Benedict, with what could only have been valid reasons at the time, there was just too much proof stacked up now to tell her she needed to readjust her stance.

"What will you do?" she finally asked before moving to sit. It had finally properly hit her that her children were missing and possibly in danger.

"I'll get them back," Brannigan spoke first, and they would have been hard-pressed to find a better way to describe him other than 'feral.' "No one touches my family." The Doctor moved to him, pressing a hand to his shoulder.

"Brannigan I know how you feel, I really do. That's why I'm going to tell you to stay here, with your wife, with the children you still have under your roof. I'll get them back for you, you know I will. Do we agree?" It took some time more, but finally the cat man consented. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a door to go and knock on."

He'd only meant to take Martha with him, but once Santana had found out what they were doing, she had insisted on coming. The Doctor would have wanted to fight her harder on this, but the truth was he felt more secure by having her where he could see her. He'd never wanted for those girls to end up where they had, and he'd be damned if he lost this one, too.

Walking up to the gates to the doctor's mansion, the Doctor could see what was happening on the other side of it, even without seeing it. The guards would have spotted him and the girls coming, informed the doctor inside, who would then see them for himself and even before they had time to ask if they could see him, he would have told his guards to let them through and escort them in. As the gates opened, the Doctor turned a look to Martha: Whatever you do, don't let the girl out of your sight. His companion gave a discreet nod, and they walked through the door.

Their escorting guards brought them into a polished lounge, where they were told to take a seat. They did this, though when Dr. Benedict walked in, the Doctor stood to shake the man's hand.

"Thank you for seeing us on such short notice," the Doctor took out all necessary courtesies, the better to let the other man think he was being respected. "You have a lovely home."

"I am a man who likes his comforts, I'll admit it," Benedict laughed jovially. "Please, sit," he motioned, and the Doctor sat back down with the two girls, while the doctor sat across from them. "Now, what may I do for you?" he asked, folding his hands in his lap. The Doctor could practically feel Santana's wish to pounce on the man, and his voice went up and down again when he spoke to reply.

"We were hoping, that is… We come on behalf of the Brannigans. They speak so highly of you, and they are in dire need at the moment," the Doctor went on.

"Oh? What has happened?" Benedict asked, sounding compelled already.

"Their children, that is, two of their children have gone missing. One of the girls, Agnes her name is, and the boy is Alfred. You are so known to the people of New New York, and you know them in return, we were hoping perhaps you might have seen something? Heard something?"

The Doctor never looked away from the man's face as he said his words, wanting to see how he would react at every turn. They were both appealing to his connection to the city and presenting themselves as not considering him complicit at all. Even then, the Doctor could see several levels of caution underneath.

"That is terrible news, absolutely dreadful," Benedict carried on his benevolent doctor act, though by now the Doctor did see if for what it was: an act. "I'm afraid I haven't heard a thing, but you tell the Brannigans now I will keep them in my thoughts and I will keep an eye and an ear out for any information whatsoever. With any luck, those poor dears will be returned to them in no time."

"Yes, one can only hope." Silence fell heavily on all of them, and though no one moved at first, the longer the silence stretched, the clearer it became that the conversation was over. "Well, we won't take any more of your time, you have been so kind to welcome us into your home tonight. You have a good evening, doctor." And they left.

TO BE CONTINUED (FRIDAY)


	13. The Prisoners' Hour

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**13. The Prisoners' Hour**

_Sometime in New New York_

For hours now, none of the three new arrivals had said a thing. They sat at the back of their cell, huddled together, as far away as they could from the others, and that got them left alone, just as they wanted. But then a man and woman came through, distributing bowls of food and glasses of water. They still didn't move, though the plates and glasses were left for them. It wasn't the best thing they'd ever smelled, but the odor reached them, and it didn't actually smell terrible, though that might have been the hunger talking. The other prisoners were all taking their bowls without hesitation, so it couldn't have been too bad. Finally, it had been Brittany who had first tempted crawling back across the cell and picking up one of the bowls. She sniffed at it, prodded what was inside with her index before picking up the spoon sticking out and scooping up a bite, which she began to chew. Within seconds, she was chowing down.

"That's it," Erlin nodded from her cell. "Feel better?" she asked, and Brittany nodded, while Agnes and Alfred joined her and did the same; they were famished too.

They'd just barely finished out their bowls, scraping down to the bottom, when the man and woman returned. At first, Brittany had believed they were only returning to gather the empty dishes, but then the woman stopped her small trolley in front of their cell and while the man fumbled with the keys, the woman pulled up a strange sort of object. Brittany didn't know what it was; the cats did. Alfred dashed for the back of the cell again, while Agnes hissed, never having looked more like a cat than she did then.

"You're not sticking us with that!" she threatened, and now Brittany panicked.

"That's a syringe?" she asked.

"One harmless shot," the woman promised.

"Don't resist," Mr. Arpen told them. "It's worse if you resist," he told them, and the tone in his voice told them he knew exactly what happened to people who resisted.

"Yes, listen to the man," said the key man. "Stand up, stand back," he instructed. The girls held to each other in order to stand, but they did as told. They were terrified, all three of them, but they had no other choice, so they did as told.

"Arm," the woman demanded. Alfred was the first, and the woman was not gentle by any means. When the shot was administered, Alfred gave a sorrowful purr and held his arm nearer to himself as soon as he was allowed. Agnes was second, and then Brittany. Whatever mark might have been left behind, on the cats, it was obscured under fur, but on the blonde, a nasty red welt had bloomed. She'd done as best she could not to be too frightened so far, but the injection had been like a shock to her system, and her eyes were wide open now. She wanted to see Santana again, she wanted to go home, to her time, her world. She wanted to be home, with her parents…

"It won't hurt too long," the second man told them. They still didn't know his name, though seeing as not one of the three of them could manage to look at him without squirming…

"What he means to say is your arm won't hurt too long," Risha cut in. "What comes next, well it all depends…" The trio looked at the old girl, shaking.

"Don't scare the children, Risha," Erlin told her. "They haven't hurt me," she shook her head, turning an optimistic smile to them.

"No… No, they didn't," Risha told her, though from what they could see in her wrinkled eye and her smooth eye, was another story. They'd already seen this Erlin woman had trouble remembering half the time. The best thing they could guess was that she had forgotten that part of her time in Dr. Benedict's basement, and neither Risha nor the others had the heart to help her remember it.

"How long have you been here?" Agnes asked them all. Some wouldn't talk, others hesitated.

"It's hard to keep track, like Arpen said. Even if we _can_ see," the second man explained. "Easily weeks, months… I wouldn't be surprised if some of them over there have been here for over a year," he pointed, and the trio squirmed. When held up nearer his head, the man's hand looked so small, it was hard to decide if that was because his head had gotten bigger or because his hand was suddenly smaller.

"Did you volunteer?" Agnes went on questioning.

"Not all of us," Mr. Arpen shook his head.

"Did I volunteer?" Erlin looked to Risha. The old girl wouldn't answer. "Did I ever tell you how much you look like my daughter?" she smiled, then paused. "At least I think I have a daughter." Risha touched her hand and smiled back to her.

"If you do, I'm sure she misses you." Erlin nodded to her, then herself, holding her free hand near her heart as though to hold on to something, maybe the memory.

The basement had grown quiet. Some of the prisoners were starting to retreat to the thin mats acting as beds. The trio of new arrivals had had no choice but to do the same. As they did, Brittany tried to find a position to be comfortable in, but she couldn't do it.

"Are you okay?" Agnes asked.

"I don't know… I don't feel good," she admitted. "Maybe I ate too fast."

"My head hurts, too," Agnes admitted.

"Do you think they have Tylenol up there?" Brittany wondered.

"What's that?" Alfred asked.

"It's a… a thing for headaches," Brittany remembered she wasn't in her own time. It was hard to believe she could forget something like that when she was surrounded by cat people and aliens.

"Get some sleep, it will help," Erlin whispered to them from across the way. So they closed their eyes.

TO BE CONTINUED (SUNDAY)


	14. One Poor Soul

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**14. One Poor Soul**

_Sometime in New New York_

Tried as they might have, the rest of the day had not seen the promise of any kind of progress. When night had fallen, the Doctor, Martha, and Santana were offered beds. It was not difficult to fit them in; they did have a pair of empty beds. The Doctor had taken Alfred's bed in the boys' room, while Martha and Santana shared Agnes' bed in the girls' room. A few times he had gone to look in on them and found them sleeping, the smaller girl leaning to Martha like a child prone to nightmares might lean to its mother.

He had been a witness to this due to the fact that while the pair of them were sleeping soundly, he on the other hand had not been able to close his eyes at all. He'd lie in the missing cat boy's bed, staring at the ceiling for a while, and then he'd get up out of frustration and go look in on the girls for a while, before he made it back to his borrowed bed and repeated the entire cycle.

Finally, morning had come. All cats great and small were still purring soundly in their beds when it came, a loud rap at the door. Being the only one awake, as far as he knew, the Doctor had sprung from the bed and hurried to the door, though by how quickly after Brannigan and Valerie had joined him, he couldn't see how they would have been sleeping either. The Doctor had been about to go for the door, but Valerie had pushed ahead of him and opened it herself.

A tall and muscular man had bustled through as soon as the way was open, carrying a load of blankets.

"I was out on morning deliveries when I spotted him. The poor thing, he was just walking by all sort of confused, didn't know me at all when I went to him, and he collapsed in my arms," the man explained, laying down the blankets, which were not exclusively blankets at all.

"Alfred!" Valerie gasped and crouched at her son's side. When they saw him, both the Doctor and Brannigan were stunned.

"I don't understand what's happened to him," the tall man looked stricken, and the Doctor would peg him for being a father himself. He went and crouched across from Valerie, pulling out the sonic screwdriver. He showed it to the mother first, for consent, and she nodded rapidly. Brannigan had disappeared, and when he returned half a minute later, a barely awake Martha was behind him.

"What's happening, why…" she started, until the Doctor looked back, and the medical student saw the boy on the floor. "What…" she breathed, moving quickly to the boy's side.

"He's still breathing, help me move him," the Doctor told the others. The delivery man had taken the task up alone, carrying Alfred up to Brannigan and Valerie's room, as they requested. By then, little by little, the other children had begun to wake, confused by all the activity, but their mother and father kept them from the room where their brother was being examined by the Doctor and Martha; they didn't want them to see what had been done to him… They weren't even entirely sure they knew what it was.

The first and easiest conclusion they could reach was that something had been done to him, or at least had been in the process of being done, and something had gone wrong, a bad reaction.

"Doctor," Martha was holding the boy's arm and staring at an area, one of many, where his fur looked to have receded. There was a great big discolored welt, which was already the second mark they found on him, after they'd removed a bandage at the back of his neck. "It's like… like…" She couldn't even bring herself to say it, the thought was too impossible. "They tried to take away the half of him that's not human," she finally made herself say it. "But they can't, he couldn't…" she shook her nerves away, getting back on track.

Only at that exact moment, Alfred began to convulse. "He's rejecting it," the Doctor stood back, muttering to himself, trying to think, while Martha moved to turn the boy on his side. "Yes!" he suddenly exclaimed, and Martha stared at him, frowning. "Just a minute!" he dashed out of the room.

"Doctor!" Martha called after him, then seeing the crowd of them outside the door, staring in horror, she frowned, taking charge again. "Brannigan, in here, shut the door!" she told him, and the boy's father did as told. "Hold him," she told the man, and he did so, while she wished very much that they were in a hospital, where she might be better equipped to deal with this. She didn't know what his system was like, being half cat, but one way or the other, there would be a way to…

When the Doctor came barging back into the room, he was lugging a large crate, which he deposited on the side of the bed and opened, rummaging through until he could find a smaller tin box, from which he pulled out what looked like no more than a gel pack. But he applied it to Alfred's forehead, and after a few more frightening seconds, the boy stopped, and he fell back in Brannigan's arms, sleeping. The room was very silent, save for much labored breathing. The boy was laid out to rest once more, and they stood back.

"Will he… Is he…" Brannigan turned to the Doctor.

"Might not be completely out of trouble, but this will help some…" he barely had time to say before he was caught up in a massive cat hug.

"Thank you, Doctor… And you, Martha," he turned to look at her. "Don't know what we would have done if you hadn't been here…" The words were heartfelt; they were also eye opening.

"Yes… We are here, aren't we…" the Doctor spoke to himself, and Martha waited to see what he would say next. "You called me… You needed help…" He looked back to Alfred. "Now we know why, don't we? The timing was wrong, not the need. Brannigan, you need to call me, so we'll come."

"But you are here, Doctor…"

"Because you called me. Now make the call."

TO BE CONTINUED (TUESDAY)


	15. Who Are We?

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**15. Who Are We?**

_Sometime in New New York_

Brittany never liked waking up in the morning, because usually it meant that she had to leave a good dream, and the waking world was never so extraordinary. But then with everything that had happened to her the day before still occupying her dreams, it had taken her a few seconds to put all her thoughts back in order and remember that this was no dream, that she had truly travelled in time and space… that was the good part. Then she remembered she had been captured by some weird doctor and, to her dismay, that part was also true.

At least she was warm, she thought as she woke, but she still felt strange. She'd had that headache the night before, she recalled it now, and for a while, she would not move, but then she heard something, someone waking up next to her, and she remembered she had not been alone.

"A…" she started to speak, but then her mouth felt strange, and it extinguished her voice for a moment. "Agnes?" What was wrong with her? "Alfred?"

"Brittany?" the cat girl's voice replied, or at least she thought it was the cat girl; her voice sounded a little different, too. "Al…" There was a sharp gasp overhead, and it drew her attention.

"Who are you?" Brittany asked, still too groggy to react very fast, or she might have pulled away from the stranger staring back at her. But she'd never looked away from her, and in the next moment, the strangest thing happened. The stranger spoke with Agnes' voice.

"It's me, Agnes Brannigan, don't you…" Then she paused, like something was working itself out in her head. She held out her arms before herself, and the sharp sort of cry that came out of the girl sitting in front of her was strange coming out of a human, until Brittany realized it was meant to come out of a cat. The human girl touched her face felt at the raven hair coming from her head, and her panic only increased. "Alfred?" her voice became louder, frantic, as she looked around the cell. "Alfred!"

"Not so loud!" Risha's voice came from the other side, but then she gasped, too, and the other prisoners were all looking into their cell.

"What's going on? Why do you look human?" Brittany asked her. The girl stared back at her.

"I don't know, why are you a cat?"

Now Brittany was the one to look at her arms, and she finally knew why she'd felt warm. She touched her face, her head. Gone was her long blond hair, replaced with the features of what was undoubtedly coming up feline. It was her teeth; that was why her mouth had felt strange. Her low strangled cry came out as a meow. "Am I… I'm still dreaming, right?"

"Afraid not," said the second man.

"This is remarkable," Erlin breathed, staring at the two girls. "Not even a thing out of place, a complete change, it's…"

"Where's my brother?" Agnes asked, more interested in that than anything else.

But before anyone could answer, they all stopped, dead silent, as they heard steps from overhead. Someone was coming, and somehow the steps must have been distinctive enough, because the other prisoners' faces changed: they knew who was coming.

"Don't panic, don't overreact," Arpen quickly counselled them.

A moment later, the door opened, and Dr. Everett Wallace Benedict walked in. His eyes gave a cursory sweep to his other subjects, but it was clear his primary interest on that day was what he would find in his most recently occupied cell. And when he saw them, the girl who had been human, now feline, and the girl who had been feline, now human, he looked as though he had just come upon a treasure trove. The closer he came to the bars, the girls reached for one another's hands, attempting to stay away from him.

"Fascinating…" his voice was slow, awed.

"Where's my brother?" Agnes managed to pull herself together enough to ask. The doctor ignored her, still staring at her and Brittany.

"You two will be my greatest scientific achievement to date. All my efforts, all these mistakes will have been for a reason."

When he had said the word 'mistakes,' even without looking away – as though he would dare to at this point – they knew he was referring to the other prisoners. Brittany remembered having heard it from the cats, how the doctor would run experiments, and people would volunteer, and how some of them came back out with some side effects, but nothing they couldn't handle. But then what about these people here? Were they too changed to let go? What did it mean for them?

"Stop it!" Agnes shouted at him. "Where is my brother?" she demanded, refusing to go unheard any longer. The doctor's face changed, only barely, and he took a step back.

"Monitoring of his response to the treatment showed he simply was not responding, and he would reject it. There was no point in carrying on, so we had to remove him."

"What does that mean?" Agnes asked, now sounding mildly afraid. The doctor was not paying attention to her. His people, the ones who would bring meals and injections were there, and he spoke to them in hushed tones. "Hey! I'm talking to you!" Agnes shouted louder. "Where's my brother?" But the doctor left, never answering, and after he was gone, in the silence, Agnes Brannigan began to cry. "He's dead, isn't he?" she mumbled, leaning to Brittany, who held her.

"Maybe not," she tried to reassure her. "Maybe he's just somewhere else," she tried to be optimistic. She looked to the other prisoners, but they didn't look very optimistic, more defeated. They believed the same thing Agnes did, that Alfred, poor Alfred, had died because of this treatment. Brittany said nothing more, but she held the human girl in her cat like arms.

TO BE CONTINUED (FRIDAY)


	16. The Future Is Past

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**16. The Future is Past**

_March 2012 – Lima, Ohio_

They used to talk about it a lot. In the weeks after they'd returned home especially, any chance they got, when they were alone and no one could hear them, they would talk about what they'd been through, when they had met the Doctor and Martha. The first time they'd ever kissed had been on one of those isolations, as the conversation had slowed down. But after a while, as the months passed, it just didn't seem as important to talk about it, and then more months passed, and it actually seemed like the best thing to do was to stop talking about it altogether, like it was safer. Even then, they would look at each other from time to time, and without words they could smile knowingly. It was their secret adventure.

But it wasn't so secret anymore, nor was it really 'theirs.' As it turned out, a lot of others they knew had met the Doctor, too. And there was this whole thing, with Miss Harrison being here, and there…

Santana wanted to talk to her, to confront her and ask for the truth, but Artie didn't think it was a good idea, Sugar either, and after Artie had talked to her, Brittany had started to think it wasn't a good idea either. Artie wanted her to convince Santana not to say anything, and that was what she was about to do, but at the same time…

"Hey," Santana smiled when she saw her coming, and Brittany blinked. She looked into a nearby classroom, saw that it was empty, and crooked her index to Santana, motioning for her to follow. When she did, Brittany shut the door, leaning against it.

"You can't talk to her," she blurted out immediately, and Santana frowned; she didn't need to specify who this 'her' was.

"Did Artie put you up to this?" she asked, and Brittany hesitated.

"No," she answered shortly. "I just think… if we go to her, and we… and we make her tell us why she's here, it could mess it all up," she started, trying to remember exactly what Artie had told her. "Whatever she's doing, she's been doing it for months, hasn't she? That has to be something really important for it to take that long. If we mess it up, it could be really bad, you know?"

"We've been through enough," Santana countered, though she seemed to be relenting now. "What's to say we wouldn't be able to help?"

"My grandfather says something about… too many cooks in the kitchen?" she hoped she remembered right, and by the look on Santana's face, she must have done right. "I'm sure if she does need us, she'll come to us, right? She knows we're there, unless… Maybe her being here, that's 'before,' you know?" Santana frowned, confused, but then the conversation had stopped, and without saying it, Brittany knew Santana would stay back, as requested. The blonde sat on the edge of one of the tables, smiling.

"What?" Santana asked.

"I just… I just think it would be nice, to see them again, the Doctor, and Martha, and the others. I miss them," she admitted. Santana knew this, as she'd heard Brittany say it many times before. Every time, her response was just about the same.

"Yeah, after you got back to normal, it wasn't so bad," she smirked, and Brittany laughed. "Still trying to get Tubbers to talk?"

"He won't do it," Brittany sighed to herself, thinking of her dear Lord Tubbington back home. "I swear I heard him once." Santana knew, as Brittany did, whether she'd admit it to herself or not, that it wouldn't be all cats who turned out like Brannigan and his children, but to Brittany it didn't matter. She was convinced that her cat was as smart, as talkative, that one day he would be going about, walking on two legs, a man grown. He was still just a cat though, a fat cat who did not do a whole lot. Brittany hadn't given up on his potential.

"I know," Santana humored her with a smile.

"The other night, I dreamt I was there again, and I was a cat again."

"I wasn't giving you a bath this time, was I?" Santana joked, and Brittany laughed.

"No, but you were a cat, too," she went on. "And we were living in the General Twenty-Four."

"You know, if it wasn't for how we were too busy running around all the time, looking for you guys, I might have cleaned up good in there. I never really appreciated what we had in that store, all the things we could have gotten…"

"Wouldn't it be bad though? I mean, bringing things back from the future."

"It's only pretend, relax," Santana told her, still smiling.

After they'd gotten back to the Grand Canyon, it had all seemed so normal, and they'd wished it could have been so much more than normal. True, there was something about going home, back to the place where you supposedly belonged, but for the two of them, despite everything they'd been through in New New York, there was a part of them who would have gladly parted with Lima Ohio in their time and called the distant future of New New York their home.

The one consolation, and it was good enough to make their regrets fade away, was that their adventure with the Doctor and Martha had brought them closer together. They had been friends before, great friends, best friends. But after they'd come back home, with a story they could only share with one another, they had become even closer than best friends. That was the reason, though she'd keep it to herself, why Brittany had both agreed to stop Santana from going to Miss Harrison, and hated that she'd agreed. She was being dishonest to Santana, even though she was almost sure that she'd seen right through her, and that was not something she liked to do ever.

TO BE CONTINUED (SUNDAY)


	17. Patient Zero

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**17. Patient Zero**

_Sometime in New New York_

The Doctor had not left Alfred's bedside for hours now, and Martha knew the boy's family was sitting downstairs, feeling every minute weigh down on them, every last one just a little heavier to bear. She knew he wouldn't give up, no matter how long it took. The only times he moved away from Alfred were to run back into the TARDIS to find something, and then he would quickly go back to the boy to carry on his examination.

Martha had been meant to help him, and she had been there, right until Alice had come dashing up the stairs to tell them Santana had snuck out – again. She wanted to get her friend back, and they understood that, but they also knew the risks, and letting a fourteen-year-old girl rush headlong through the doctor's gates was not going to happen. Not wanting to put anything more on the Brannigans' plates, Martha had taken on keeping an eye on Santana while the Doctor worked over Alfred. At this point, he might work better if there was no one distracting him.

On Santana's third attempt, Martha had pulled the girl into the Brannigans' kitchen, made her sit, and started to pull whatever food she recognized, dropping it on the table. "Go on then," Martha nodded to Santana and the table.

"What?" the girl frowned, crossing her arms before herself.

"There are people in that other room, worried sick, as much as you are, and they've been sitting there for hours, and none of us has had a thing to eat. So you and I are going to put something together, and maybe you'll stay here and I won't have to chase you… again."

"He's got her!" Santana blurted out, louder than she meant to, and Martha thought she heard the six Brannigans in the next room turn at once. She came up to the table, sitting with the girl, who looked like she was trying not to cry, and taking her hands.

"It's alright," she promised. "We'll get her back." Somewhere in her head, she was hearing her mother telling her that she shouldn't make promises she didn't know she could keep.

"You saw what he did to Alfred!" Santana was still agitated, and her voice had at least lowered some of the way. "What if he did that to her, too, and to Agnes?"

"The Doctor will…"

"You know you're so sure that he can do everything, but we're sitting here while Brittany could be in pain, and I can't just…"

"I know it's hard, but I do believe the Doctor has it right about this," Martha nodded. Santana sniffled, in a way that told the other girl she wasn't the sniffling type, especially in public. Martha pretended like she couldn't see, though she did slip her a tissue. "You two are obviously very close, and that's good," she smiled encouragingly. "If you were the one in trouble, she would fight to get you out, same as you're doing for her, wouldn't she?"

"In a second," Santana confirmed.

"Then wherever she is, whatever's happening to her," Martha went on, and Santana flinched at the thought. "She'll know you're coming for her, right?"

"Right," Santana bowed her head, dabbing at her eyes.

"There's a lot of power in that, so don't write her off as helpless." This seemed to do the trick, reassuring Santana, and after a moment, she sat up, starting on to the task she'd been assigned, putting together a late breakfast for herself, Martha, and the Brannigans.

"So if he's an alien, does he eat like us? The Doctor?" she asked, willing for conversation to exist, the better to stop silence from taking over again.

"Oh, he does… Not always the most… conventional flavors," she frowned, reminiscing, then laughed, which made Santana smile. She was still worried, clearly, but finally, just barely, she had hope.

x

When the Doctor's steps had been heard on the stairs from above, Brannigan, Valerie, and the four children sitting with them, all stood in wait, imagining that he was coming with news.

"May I speak with you?" he looked to the parents. "In private." The children began to speak all at once, afraid that they were about to get bad news about their brother. "No, no, it's alright," the Doctor waved his hands, realizing this. "I mean, there's no change, but that's as bad as it's good, I… Never mind," he shook his head, motioning for the pair to follow him aside. Once they were alone, he made his request. "I need to see more of them."

"More of…" Valerie started to ask, and the Doctor explained.

"More patients, more 'volunteers,'" he emphasized the words to remind them how much he didn't agree with how willing they'd all been to submit to Benedict's experiments.

"What for?" Valerie asked.

"I need more information, it may be vital…"

"What about our daughter? And that girl? They're still out there, with Dr. Benedict…"

"I am well aware of this," he assured her. "But I saw that place, and so did you," he nodded to Brannigan. "I don't think it'd be wise to push in without a plan, do you?" Brannigan hesitated, looking to his wife and the Doctor. He had absolute faith in the Time Lord, but then he shared his wife's concerns. "If I can see some of them, speak to them, examine them, I'll have a better idea of what's happening. It may be our best chance of restoring Alfred, and the girls, too, assuming he's done anything like this to them as well."

"Can you, Doctor? Can you make him as he was?" Brannigan asked. The Doctor stared at him, the words he'd been about to say being swallowed back into his mouth. He sighed.

"I will do everything in my power, and if there is any way of undoing what's been done to him, believe you me, I will find it, even if it takes me centuries," he vowed.

The way Valerie was looking at him now, it was as though she'd finally remembered what he'd done for them, all those years ago on the motorway.

"Alright," she bowed her head. "We'll bring them to you."

TO BE CONTINUED (TUESDAY)


	18. Benedict's Volunteers

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**18. Benedict's Volunteers**

_Sometime in New New York_

Things were not going too well so far. While Martha kept an eye on Alfred upstairs, downstairs the Brannigans had done what the Doctor needed them to do and they had gathered any number of Doctor Benedict's former subjects, so that they might ask the questions they needed to ask. As they came, the Doctor had observed them quietly, saw how some of them showed definite signs of having had something done to them, while others could have fooled anyone to think they were untouched by any experiment. They may not have known exactly what the reason was for their summoning at first, but the more of them piled into the Brannigan home, the more evident it became. And then it had all started turning sour.

As surprised as they might have been for the support Valerie and her husband gave to the doctor before they knew the truth, it was just that much more expected once they had it come from the others. Even as the Doctor explained that Benedict was using them, that he had kidnapped some of them, they looked ready to riot. They would not accept that the man who had helped their city years ago, the man they had submitted themselves to, for the betterment of people both near and far from them, was not who he claimed to be. Some of them looked to Valerie and Brannigan in shock that they would dare bring them before a lunatic, while others looked ready to leave. They had not said a word about Alfred and how he had been found, what had been done to him.

Then Martha came dashing down the stairs.

"Doctor!" she shouted, and his efforts to silence the small crowd had been thrown aside. He hurried to meet her, as did the parents, the four cat children, and Santana.

"Is it Alfred?" Valerie asked.

"Is he worse?" Brannigan followed. Martha shook her head.

"Not worse, I don't know how good, but he's awake, Doctor," she turned to him. "He's completely coherent, he can talk and tell us what happened." The Brannigans were overjoyed. In the other room, some of their gathered crowd was looking their way, clearly wondering what was happening.

"Yes. Yes, he can tell us," the Doctor nodded. "Brannigan, if he's up to the task, will you bring him here? I think they all need to hear what he has to say."

Alfred had not wanted to come at first. He had seen what he looked like, and he didn't want people to point at him or laugh. What had convinced him was the realization that his sister and Brittany were still missing. If he could help bring them back, then he would find courage somewhere, and he would talk. His father helped him down. He could probably have walked on his own, at the worst he could have held to the wall, but his father was so concerned for him that he insisted to help, and Alfred did not refuse.

There had been an audible rush of gasps and murmurs as the boy came in, halfway a cat, halfway a human boy. It was not an even split by far. He looked rough, wrong. He looked like a mistake, which was what he'd been to the doctor who had been ready to toss him aside.

"Tell us what happened, Alfred?" the Doctor asked, his voice soft and encouraging. He held the boy's hand, so he might see that he wasn't afraid of or disgusted by his appearance.

So he began. He told them about being in the General Twenty-Four, where they had been accosted by a guard, who'd looked suspicious enough that they chose to run, and then the next thing he knew, everything had gone dark. He went on to describe their waking up in their cell, how they had no idea where they were but soon found they weren't alone. He described as best he could the people who had been there in the other cells. The man from the library with the strange eyes, the forgetful woman, the old girl, and the man with the misshapen head… There were others, too, but those were the ones who'd spoken, the ones he remembered. He pointed to his neck to show how they'd learned of their sampling, then explained how someone had come to give them an injection in the arm. Then came the moment where everything went wrong.

"We were all feeling strange, before we went to sleep. We only thought… with everything that happened before," he explained, his finger absently prodding at a bare spot of flesh on his arm. "But I woke up again, I was too warm. I didn't want to wake the girls, didn't want to make trouble. I tried to get closer to a window, something… But there were no windows. Then they came, the people with the needles. They said nothing, took me from the others. I tried to resist, but I couldn't, everything was blurry, couldn't feel my legs…" Valerie looked like she wanted to go and hug him, take him away from this, but she had to stay, had to let him finish. Everyone was listening. "Don't remember much after that… Only I saw a door, the last thing I really remember before I woke up just now."

"You escaped, didn't you?" the Doctor sounded as he was both speaking to Alfred and to himself. "He can't know you're here with us, that you've talked." He turned to Martha, who turned to Santana, making sure she was still there. The girl looked more scared than ever.

"Still think that Benedict man is so great, do you?" Brannigan faced the crowd standing and sitting in his home. "See what he's done to my boy. Who knows what he's done to my daughter, to that girl's friend, to those others he's got. Can you stand there and do nothing, or will you help our friends? If there's anyone in this city deserving of your help, it's this man," he clapped his hand to the Doctor's shoulder.

There was no more argument. They would answer any and all question put to them.

TO BE CONTINUED (FRIDAY)


	19. Feline Instincts

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**19. Feline Instincts**

_Sometime in New New York_

They had spent the last few hours in relative silence, where they either sat and stared at the ground, or the ceiling, or the bars around them, or they stared and prodded at themselves, inspecting their faces, their hands, feet… There was this odd sort of dual reaction in that what had happened to them was both absolutely terrifying and surprisingly fascinating. Whether they wished to stay this way or not was a question all on its own, the answer to which was a resounding no. The actual problem was that they were trapped and, unless they could get out, there was no way they would ever be returned to normal. As far as they knew, no one knew where they were yet, which left their options, as far as rescues went, entirely up to the two of them.

Brittany was still flexing her new cat hands, but Agnes, who had been a cat all her life, was looking on to bigger and better things.

"Brittany," she whispered, and the girl looked up, briefly startled to see Agnes and her human face again. "Look," she directed her gaze with her own eyes, at once pressing on the fact that she needed to be discreet, and Brittany did as told. As solid and imposing as the bars were, they did not actually go up to the ceiling. There was a space in between the top of the bars and the ceiling, and Brittany quickly thought that a person might actually be able to fit through there… Then she knew what Agnes wanted to do.

"But it's too high," she whispered back.

"If you can get on my shoulders, I can boost you up, and…"

"Wait, why am I the one climbing?" Brittany protested. Agnes frowned and picked up her hands, palms up.

"Because right now I couldn't make it, but you might have a shot. I can show you how to do it." Brittany looked at her hands, and Agnes could see the curiosity rising in her.

"Okay, I'll do it," she finally agreed.

They had to wait until after lunch would be brought to them, knowing it had to be soon. From what they'd heard out of the others, their meals were prompt, which they supposed was one thing they had going for them. This then left them a little while for Agnes to explain to Brittany what she would have to do, as they sat huddled in the corner of their cell, whispering. They weren't necessarily looking to keep the others out of the loop, but then what if Benedict was listening?

Lunch came and, now that they knew it was safe, the girls did not hesitate to eat up as soon as they received their meal. Now all they could do was sit and wait for the dishes to be taken away, and they could start looking into putting their plan in motion.

The other prisoners had not kept too close of an eye on the girls, seeing their retreat into the back of their cell as showing they needed more time on their own. But once they saw them standing on their feet, with the newly human girl making oddly specific gestures in between pointing to the top of the bars, they finally intervened.

"What are you doing?" Erlin asked. Agnes and Brittany turned to look at her, looked at each other, and Agnes shook her head.

They didn't answer. Instead, Agnes positioned herself, clasping her hands together to give Brittany the boost she'd need. The girl who had become a cat had also given some pointers from her time as a cheerleader, hoping it might be useful in getting her over the bars.

"Get down from there!" Risha told them, trying not to be so loud as to alert anyone.

"What's happening?" Mr. Arpen asked, unable to see.

"You're going to get hurt!" Erlin added, alarmed.

"Will someone tell me what they're doing?" Arpen sounded like he'd never missed his sight more than he did in that moment.

"She's going to climb over the bars," the second man provided.

"What?" Arpen grappled his way nearer to the bars of his own cell. "Can you really do it?"

"Don't encourage them, it's suicide!" Risha scowled at him.

"I don't see you coming up with a way out of here. Unlike you, I don't plan spending the rest of my life cooped up here."

While they'd been arguing, Agnes had been instructing Brittany, and before they knew it, she had gotten hold of the top of the bars and was hoisting herself over.

"She's doing it!" Erlin spoke when she saw her, and now they watched in silence.

They had barely had time to register one thing happening that the other happened, too.

Just as Brittany was aiming to leap on the other side, which would have so happened to leave her standing in front of the door through which all their 'visitors' thus far had entered and left, that door had opened and shut behind one of their attending guards. Brittany had not realized this, and when she let go, she came crashing down on top of the man, who crumpled to the ground, unconscious though he'd cushioned her fall.

No one dared to speak for a moment, before Agnes crouched down in front of the knocked out guard and the slowly rising Brittany, on the other side of the bars.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

"I think so, yes," Brittany grunted and then hissed.

"He could wake up any second!" Risha pointed out from her cell. "Or someone else might come. So if you're going to do anything, then you better do it fast."

"Get his keys!" Agnes whispered, and Brittany carefully searched the man until she had what she was looking for.

"You guys still use keys?" she remarked to herself.

"Sometimes," Arpen replied. "Hurry and let us out!"

Most of the others wouldn't move, too afraid of repercussions, but one by one Brittany would open the cells and release Agnes, Mr. Arpen, Erlin, Risha, and the still nameless man. When she was done, she looked at them all, standing haggard as they were.

"Now what?"

TO BE CONTINUED (SUNDAY)


	20. Diagnostic

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**20. Diagnostic**

_Sometime in New New York_

Never had Martha seen the Doctor be more fitting to the name as he was on that day. One by one they had gone through the assembled former subjects of Doctor Benedict, and they were examined, while they recounted their own experiences, what they remembered from being in the great big house across the gates. As they went, Martha took diligent notes, separating the medical elements from the rest of the information.

In doing this, they did learn a fair amount. For one thing, they discovered that some of them had been kept there anywhere from days to weeks, sometimes months. Some of them just never returned, now that they thought about it.

"That one there," one old woman pointed a bony finger to the tall man who'd brought Alfred in. "His wife went in, never did return, did she? And I think his daughter, too," she nodded. Looking at her, Martha couldn't help but think how her hands looked much older, frailer, than her face seemed to indicate it should. It was as though her hands were older than her head.

Martha had thought to build a timeline of when they'd gone in for these treatments, to get a better idea, and it was in doing so that she started to see it. There was definitely a pattern, she was seeing it now. Even as she rearranged her sheets, one to each patient, it made more and more sense. She debated pointing it out to the Doctor, but he was already on a roll, and if she even tried to cut in and break his momentum, he'd probably argue at her and keep going. So she waited, further building up her case, the better to present it to him after they had seen the last few people.

When the last of them had gone, the Doctor had plopped down on the Brannigans' couch with a pronounced sigh, stretching out his arms for a moment before he looked up to Martha.

"So do you see it yet?" he asked her, and she closed her eyes for a moment, then moved forward.

"Yes," she stacked the papers in three neat piles on a table. The Doctor sprang back to his feet and went to take a look, browsing through the sheets much more rapidly than she might have liked. "They fit together, they do. Different symptoms, in many of them, but nonetheless symptoms which appear to collect into three distinct groups… There is never any sort of overlap. Separating them by time effectively separates them into their groups. The first group… Something's affected their memories."

"Some have more than they should, some have less than they had," the Doctor nodded.

"Second group, he's gone and messed with their brains, like he's trying to increase their power, but all he's done so far is mutilate them. Some have lost senses, others have become deformed. And the third group…" she thought about the lady with the old hands. "It's like he's split their bodies and messed with the clock. But Alfred…" she looked around now, as though she expected to see one cat or another listening in. "Alfred's new, haven't seen any like him, and he's the most recent."

"And what does that tell you?" the Doctor asked, leaning his chin against palm, as his elbow was planted against the table.

"Whatever they think he's doing, it's wrong. It's not for the greater good, for the city of New New York… He's playing with things he shouldn't be playing with, because he can, because they'll let him, and they have no idea."

"And what we have here," he looked at the stacks of paper.

"Three test groups, four with Alfred. Each one of them with a different goal, each with its own set of side effects. Only he hasn't let them all go, has he? Some of them never returned, and no one even bats an eye."

"Why would they? Benedict's their hero," the Doctor nodded along.

"He's abused their trust, we can't allow it."

"So what do you plan on doing about it?" he went on. She opened her mouth to speak, then stopped.

"I don't know yet," she admitted.

"But there's more to it than that, isn't there? You haven't seen that part yet, have you?"

"I… No, I suppose I haven't. Why, have you?"

"Oh yeah," he stood back up. "Well, starting to," he leafed through the pages in one pile and then the next. "Do me a favor, will you? Look in on the others? Brannigan, especially, I'd say he's just about due for doing something impulsive." She frowned at him. "Please, go on?"

"Alright," she frowned, heading out of the room.

"Thank you!" he called after her before sitting at the table again, staring at the neat piles she'd made.

He could see in the margins of some of those piles, how she'd taken notes of some of these people who'd gone and never returned, as this patient or that one mentioned them in passing.

_Trean, delivery man. Wife and daughter. Groups?_

"Trean, who's T…" he mumbled to himself, then he turned. Even alone in the room now, he remembered when it was packed, and he remembered the muscular man in the corner. After he'd brought Alfred he'd just sort of stuck around, even through the interviews. The Doctor had a feeling if he walked out of the room he would still find him there, so he poked his head out the door. With a whistle, he caught the man's attention, signalled for him to come into the room. Minding the fact that he knew why the man was still there, the Doctor respectfully asked him why he was still there, so he explained.

It was over a year ago now, nearly two, that his wife had volunteered. She said it had been their duty, and that they should do the same. Only his Erlin had never returned. Weeks after she'd gone, they'd been told she'd died. He had done his best to keep the house together, just him and his daughter. Only seven and a half months ago, poor Risha had gone missing, went to work one morning and then never made it back. He never knew what happened, though part of him thought it might have to do with Benedict. He'd never said anything, because who would believe him?

TO BE CONTINUED (TUESDAY)


	21. Brannigans United

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**21. Brannigans United**

_Sometime in New New York_

Not long ago on that very day, if she had found herself all on her own as she was now, Santana might have decided to strike out on her own and do what no one seemed any closer to doing, and that was to rescue Brittany. But Martha had actually gone and convinced her to stay put, so she did. Only then they were all so busy interrogating and examining all these people that she had practically been forgotten, left to stand in the corner and wait until something might happen.

It was because of this that she had been right there to see when someone went and snuck out the door. After hesitating for all of four and a half seconds, Santana had snuck out, too, going right up behind between the tall cat man.

"Hey!" she called, and he jumped, turning on her and then stopping all at once as he saw it was only her. "Where do you think you're going, we're supposed to wait."

"Go back to the house, little girl," he tapped her shoulder and turned back to go on his way. Santana glared and hurried again to his side.

"I'm not a little girl, and if you're going, then I'm going."

"It's too dangerous for you," Brannigan refused.

"Do I look like I care? She's my responsibility," she declared, and staring at her, the cat man might have been seeing much of the same guilt he was feeling himself, knowing that his daughter was in danger. "If you send me back, I'll have to tell the others that you went," she pointed out. Brannigan considered, then sighed.

"Very well. But stay close, do you hear? I will not have one more of you get hurt," he pointed a finger at her.

"You got it," Santana promised, and they walked on, unaware that they were being followed.

Martha had just been looking for Brannigan when she'd seen Santana sneak out. She'd honestly thought she'd gotten through to the girl, but evidently there was much more for her to learn. So she stepped out of the house also, trailing after the fourteen-year-old. She was about to call out to her when she realized that Santana was following someone else: She hadn't gone out for herself, she'd followed Brannigan! Now Martha frowned at him, but she didn't reveal herself, not yet.

She had a pretty good idea where they were going, but maybe on the hope that they might all change their mind and turn back, she'd stayed behind, trailing quietly. She'd followed, and followed, and they had not given any sign whatsoever of turning back. So, with a sigh, she'd hurried her pace and caught up to them.

"I thought we'd agreed," she called, and now the two turned with the same startled look.

"Martha," Santana started, but Brannigan cut in.

"They have Agnes, they have her friend, and from what those others have said, there will be more. We can't sit by, and I don't see how you could. Now the way I see it, the Doctor's gone and made enough of an impression on Benedict that he'll expect him to come… He won't expect us," Brannigan shook his head determinedly.

"Can you really know that?" Martha tried to be strict yet understanding. It was one thing for Brannigan to go and do this, but to bring Santana into it…

"It's better at least to try," the girl cut in, and Martha could see Brannigan had reawakened something in her, a need to act. They wouldn't go back, not now. And if she was perfectly honest with herself, Martha didn't want to go back either. She had a better understanding of what was happening in that house, now that they'd seen the others, and the thought alone of what might still be happening to the people stuck inside was making her hate having to stand still.

"Right… Alright… I suppose we might have a look.

X

The Doctor had gone back to get another look at Alfred. He knew now what the previous subjects had been put through, and knowing that Alfred was the lone example of his group thus far, he had to know more, to either confirm or deny his suspicions.

Now that he was awake, it was notably easier to get some information out of him, though at the same time he knew it could be misleading. The obvious answer might have been the actual answer, or it could have…

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of multiple voices talking at once downstairs, and with apologies to Alfred, he headed down to see what it was all about.

Valerie was trying to get a word in while four of her children were standing in front of her, all talking at once. The mother was talking to one, then another, and then a third, back to the first and on to the fourth, but at no point did their voices lower at all.

"Quiet!" the Doctor's voice carried and, maybe for having caught them by surprise, succeeded in silencing the cat children and making them turn. "Thank you. Now. What's all this about?" his voice returned to caring curiosity.

"What do you think?" Val frowned. "They were trying to go out there."

"Why not?" Alice asked, with a frown that revealed her for her mother's daughter, despite the fact that one was a cat and one was not.

"Yeah, Dad went, and the others, too," Alexander piped in.

"He did what?" Val asked.

"What others?" the Doctor asked, barrelling down the last few steps.

"Santana and Martha, they went, too," Allen replied, and the Doctor groaned.

"The four of you, to your rooms," he pointed to the cats, turning a quick look to Val to make sure she didn't mind his ordering her kids around. She shrugged approvingly. "You stay with Alfred," he told her; she was more than happy to. "No one leaves, and no one goes anywhere near that house, is that clear?" He made for the door, at which point he spotted Trean looking at him, inquiring silently. "You, come with me."

TO BE CONTINUED (FRIDAY)


	22. The Blue Thing

_A/N: So sorry for the monster delay of yesterday's chapter, but things were mad here and... yeah ;)_

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**22. The Blue Thing**

_March 2012 – Lima, Ohio_

Quinn had taken to looking at them lately. Knowing what she did now, it was hard to believe how she had completely missed seeing what they were up to. They'd all known about the Doctor, even before she'd met him, and they'd met him… her… all of those Doctors that were in fact one person… How had she not realized they were up to something? Now that she knew, it was so blatant.

She'd thought to use this as her way in, knowing what Ginny… Gemma… had asked her to do, but all it guaranteed her was that they might feel trapped, or they might lie to her. No, it was better to ease her way in, start wedging a crack of possibility, then let them widen it, so that she could deliver the last blow and find herself in their circle before they knew what was happening. She knew just what to start that wedge with, too.

She had it in her bag, and now all she needed was an opportunity. It came the next afternoon, as she rolled into the choir room and found Brittany there, with Sugar and Artie not far off. They were the only ones there so far, which would make it easy to be discreetly obvious.

"Britt, can I talk to you?" she asked, her voice low as she tipped her head to the side.

"Sure," Brittany came forward with a smile, and Quinn motioned for her to crouch.

"I wanted to ask you about this," she reached into her bag and pulled out one of her textbooks.

"On history?" Brittany blinked, surprised.

"No," Quinn smiled, reaching into the book to pull out the thing she'd stuck inside. It was a card, handmade, covered in crayon drawings. "This thing, here," she pointed to the blue square which, on closer inspection the night before, revealed itself as being familiar. The moment Brittany's eyes fell on it now, there was the tiniest flicker of panic, darting to the other two, who hadn't really been paying attention. But finally Artie did look, and when he saw what was happening, he closed his mouth to guard against the gasp threatening to escape him, and he clamped his hand on Sugar's arm. She followed his gaze and saw, too. Quinn was pointing at the TARDIS-looking thing on Brittany's get well card.

"What about it?" Brittany asked, attempting to keep cool, not give anything away. She could have done better.

"What's it supposed to be exactly?" Quinn asked.

"It's a T…" she started, feeling Artie and Sugar's eyes and clamping shut for a second before trying to turn her thoughts around as fast as she could. "… orch… Torch," she breathed out, nodding, proud of herself. She'd had the presence of mind to draw lines around the light at the top, it was plausible.

"It is?" Quinn looked back at the card, frowning.

"Yes," Brittany continued nodding.

"Oh… Right," Quinn was playing, too, and the emotion she was going for was 'disappointed.' Artie motioned at Brittany, who frowned, not catching on, and thinking maybe he was propositioning something else entirely.

"Why did you want to know?" she asked, unaware of the sudden relief on Artie's face; that was exactly what he wanted to ask.

"Nothing, I just…" Now Quinn put forth every bit of her abilities in play, putting on the face of someone remembering something fondly, as she looked to the blue thing on the card. In doing so, she couldn't see the others' faces, but if she played her cards right, then right about now they would all be staring at each other, putting the pieces together and realizing what she was attempting to suggest.

"What…" Artie started, and inwardly she smiled victoriously. As dubious as it could all be, misleading her friends, it was for a good reason, and further on, after everything she'd been through, she was actually enjoying herself… "What did you think it might be?" he went on asking, and she turned to him, the smile gone, unseen, and replaced with hesitation and doubt.

"Nothing in particular."

"Then why did you want to know?" Sugar couldn't help pitching in.

"Well, I…" Quinn looked back down to the card, letting them bait her as they liked.

"Have you seen something like it before?" Artie asked.

"It's a torch," Brittany kept to her explanation, frowning at him for diverting from it. But he wasn't paying attention. His eyes were on Quinn, and hers were trying not to be on him and failing.

"But it's not, is it?" he asked, "Not according to you."

"I shouldn't have said anything, really, forget…" she shook her head, slipping the card back into her book.

"A phone box, maybe?" The book slid shut. "Except not a phone box. Police box, maybe?"

"What's a police box?" Quinn played someone playing.

"Yeah, what is it though?" Brittany blinked, briefly brought to asking herself the same question.

"Except not a police box, either," Artie carried on. "Looks small, but it's not? Especially on the inside?" he went on, and now Quinn veered her act into 'hey wait a second.' Artie sat up in his chair, looking at her in utter disbelief. "Don't tell me…"

"Wait, you too?" Sugar was stunned as Artie was, though very possibly for very different reasons. "You've met him, haven't you?"

"Me…" Quinn blinked as though she'd just realized what Sugar was suggesting. "You've met…"

"… the Doctor," Sugar spoke, and now feeling Artie staring at her, she thought she might have said too much and bowed her head.

"I… yeah… All of you?" she looked at the trio. Brittany looked to Artie, silently asking him what she should do, if she could tell the truth. He sighed and nodded.

"We did, all of us, not at the same time though. Well, I met him when I was with Santana. And Puck's met him, too," Brittany blurted out.

"When did you meet him? Was it a him?" Sugar asked.

"Well… I met him right before my accident… literally right before."

TO BE CONTINUED (SUNDAY)


	23. Swapping Stories

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**23. Swapping Stories**

_Sometime in New New York_

Mr. Arpen had known where to find the other door. Blind as he was, his other senses were not failing him by far, and without even seeing it, he had become aware of the sound of footsteps, felt the slight passage of wind at times… When he pointed this out to the others, after they'd been sprung from their cells, they found it, a second door through which they might have a better chance of slipping unseen. The first door would have gotten them caught immediately, and while there was still every chance something would happen here, too, where they would be found, they had at least some possibility of going unnoticed, and they would have to risk it. It was either that or staying put.

The corridor they found outside was dark, but for the time being it was clear of any other foot traffic, so the six prisoners went, one after the other. They had no idea where they were going, but at one point they were bound to find a way up – they knew they were underground – and out of the building. For the time being, they had the element of surprise on their side, but that would all be taken away as soon as Benedict's people realized they had gone, so there was no time to spare.

They had a close call where they were forced to duck into a small cupboard they'd passed just seconds before, when they thought they heard people coming from around the corner. It was bordering on being cramped, but it didn't matter, so long as they were quiet and no one found them.

Brittany was hoping no one could tell how scared she was when she felt Agnes take hold of her hand, bringing her relief unrequested but much appreciated.

"I think they've gone," the former cat girl whispered.

"Better wait a while more," Risha did the same. So they did, sitting quiet but nervous. Risha held on to Erlin's hand, sensing her anxious as well.

"I hope the others are okay," Agnes suddenly realized, thinking of her other brothers and sisters, and Brittany's friend. They'd all been in the store, too, when they'd been taken, so what if they were also trapped here, and she just didn't know? They'd already lost Alfred, and thinking about him had not gotten any easier.

"What others?" the other man asked.

"There were eight of us, we'd split up, and us and Alfred got snatched up," Agnes explained.

"They're not here," he shook his head. "We would have known." He was trying to reassure her, and she was glad for it, but at the same time what if he was wrong?

"How did you get stuck here?" Brittany asked the man. She still had trouble looking at his head, seeing the shape of it. He was just… wrong.

"He didn't get stuck, did he?" Mr. Arpen cut in before the other man could answer. "His is one of the last faces I ever saw. He worked for him, for Benedict, but then he messed up, let one of the subjects get out, and the next day, there he was, in the cell next to mine, sampled, injected, the whole lot. Won't even tell us his name."

"I have family," the man frowned, barely managing to keep his voice down. "All it takes is someone finding out where they are, and they might be in trouble."

"Where do they think you are?" Brittany asked.

"Dead, and they're better off," the man's hand brushed just near his face but then pulled away; he was ashamed of how his head looked, too. They had a vague idea of how Mr. Arpen had ended up here, and as much as they might want to find out about Erlin's story, they didn't expect much out of the memory challenged woman.

"What about you?" Brittany turned to Risha. "How did you get here?" The old girl stared at her mismatched hands, touching thumb to thumb, index to index, and so forth.

"I was looking for someone," was all she finally said, and before anyone had dared ask her what this meant, they'd remembered where they were, what they were trying to do, and Agnes stuck her ear to the door.

"I don't hear anything. We should go," she told the others, who all gave quiet assent.

After Agnes had slid the door open in silence, just far enough so to see what was outside, and confirmed that the way was open, they had emerged, one behind the other.

"Are those the stairs?" Erlin had barely asked, when everything went wrong.

They never saw the guards coming, not until the nameless man, who'd been at the back, all of a sudden groaned and pitched forward, convulsing as though he'd been electrocuted. In the next moment, Risha, at the top of the line, was hit in the head and tripped into Erlin's arms behind her. The second they'd touched, a sort of primal and inexplicable fury took the woman over, and she lunged at the one who'd hit the old girl. After this, it was impossible to make out what was happening to who, not until it all stopped.

"Down! Get down on the ground, right now!" one of the guards barked, and those of them who were still capable of doing this of their own accord did as they were told.

"Mr. Arpen?" Agnes' voice trembled as she looked at the man next to her, who was bleeding and barely moving.

"Quiet!" the guard approached her, and she fell back at Brittany's side, the two girls grasping one another's hands.

They were all taken back to their cells, and for all the questions they might have had, no one dared speak. The two girls might have been the only ones completely unharmed, and this time they were placed in separate cells, which caused them alarm thought they didn't resist. No one was saying anything about those who were hurt, and Mr. Arpen might have been dying, for all they knew. They could only hope that a doctor would be sent shortly to tend to them. Until then, all they could do was sit in the heaviness of their failure. They were back where they had started, worse than, and hope was dwindling away.

TO BE CONTINUED (TUESDAY)


	24. Making Nice

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**24. Making Nice**

_Sometime in New New York_

There were two choices as the Doctor approached Benedict's mansion. Well, actually, there were possibly a dozen choices, but once the harebrained plans were weeded out, only two were left to him. The first would be to find Martha, Brannigan, and Santana, which would then open on to a supplementary choice, to aid or discourage. The second was to make for the front door, and that was the one he chose. If his calculations were correct, and naturally they were, his arrival was so expected that the guards at the gate fell in around him in a guarantee that he could not and would not wander away.

"Never have I encountered such fervent interest in my work, Doctor, I'm flattered," Benedict's voice floated out of the room before the Doctor could step in and find the man sat in the same large chair as he'd been the last time. The Doctor didn't sit, instead standing behind and leaning against the back of the tall chair's twin, facing Benedict.

"Curious man, that's me," he shrugged before looking back to him. "But tell me now, because it is something I'd like to know. Here you came, all those years ago, and you found this place, oh… in absolutely dire times. You helped them, and they made you their personal hero, who wouldn't? They offered themselves to you, anything to help the benevolent Doctor Benedict. A good offer if I ever saw one. So you stayed. You took their offer, and what did you do with it exactly? I hear you've been running experiments, that's… that's fascinating. How's that working out for you, Benedict?"

_I don't care how good your guards are, something's happened, I can see it in their faces. But it's not someone coming in, no. They've tried getting out already, tried but not succeeded, not so far._

"It's as anything in science, isn't it? Trial and error," the man shrugged with a sort of pompous chortle that convinced the Doctor of just what pieces in this game of theirs were now in motion.

"Yes, that's… that's it, for certain," the Doctor dipped just a little further in his lean on the chair while his hand tucked into his pocket and closed around his sonic screwdriver. "Do you ever think about going back to… I'm sorry, where is it you're from originally?" he asked. So long as he could keep him talking, he could keep deflecting whatever warnings were attempting to find their way up to Benedict, whatever signs that they were about to be broken in to.

"I was born a vagabond among the stars," the doctor declared. "My parents, for what I knew of them, originated from the Bersin system."

"Ah, Bersin, yes, charming place… before the war, and after it, too. Not so much in the middle… So then they would have been chasing after all of you, is that right?"

"I was four years old when they found us. I watched them murder both of my mother and father. I was luckier. I was hidden, and I was found by someone who chose to protect me rather than give me up, and he raised me, taught me. Don't know where I'd be without that man…" he showed more emotion, the Doctor found, talking about his savior than his family, which he imagined was only natural.

"What would he say if he could see what you're doing these days?"

"Why, he would be proud," Benedict fixed him with a stare.

"Would he?" the Doctor stood back from the chair.

"Yes, and he would know as well as I do what's happening now." _Oh, well, we're moving into the final round, aren't we?_

"And what is happening, Everett?" the Doctor asked, pressing on the name.

"Girls, Doctor. Two of them. You'll be looking for them, I imagine, looking to set them free. And sooner or later, something would have to bring you back, here to me, as though you were right where you wanted to be, so you could go on and be clever. The thing is, I am clever, too. I knew you would return, and when you did, then you'd be exactly where I wanted you."

"Ah…" the Doctor blinked shortly, then did a laughing double take, pointing at him. "Oh, oh you think you've got me in a trap, is that it? It is, you're a lion that's pounced, waiting to pry your paw back and see what delicious morsel you've gone and cornered. Let me ask you this then, Ev, did you ever think this little morsel, and yes, I am ever so delicious, might be right where it wishes to be?"

"And are you, Doctor? Are you where you wish to be?" Benedict stood. The Doctor didn't have to look over his shoulder to see that the guards had surrounded him, but he did it anyway, just for show.

"Hello!" he gave them a short wave, which was promptly cut off when two of those guards caught him by the arms, the better to make him kneel. "Alright, alright, no need to play rough now," the Doctor insisted. Benedict took a few leisurely steps toward him.

"I take it you'll have found the boy, too?"

"Alfred, yes, we did. What did you do to him?"

"Same thing as the girls," Benedict shrugged. "Oh but the results, Doctor, you should see them. Better yet, I'd say with the success of this previous set, what I need to do is see what happens with different variables, a different pair." He was standing in front of him now, crouching to meet his eye. "See, I don't know what you are, Doctor, but whatever it is, it's not human. Sampling won't do for you, oh, no, we'll have to delve much deeper." He stood back up, looking to his guards. "Take him down to the lab, examination room four. Full restriction, lockdown, guards at the door. This one is not getting away."

TO BE CONTINUED (FRIDAY)


	25. The Cavalry

_A/N: Yeah, so you know how these always come on Fridays/Sundays/Tuesdays? Yeah, now this cycle they're coming on Thursdays/Saturdays/Mondays/Wednesdays... :D_

* * *

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**25. The Cavalry**

_Sometime in New New York_

It had been Santana who'd pointed out the one thing that led to their finding a way in. Doctor Benedict may have been some kind of really smart scientist, but if people were supposed to trust him so much there had to be some weak spots through which they could slip and break into his mansion. Before they knew it, they were over the gate and seeking out a door they could use to get inside.

It took a while before they knew where they were supposed to go. If getting in and staying out of the guards' way wasn't enough, they had never set foot in this part of the house. For all they knew, they were completely in the wrong place. But they had to keep searching. They knew without a doubt that somewhere in this house, Agnes and Brittany were trapped.

In the basement, they followed corridors, looking into rooms where they could, straining to hear whatever was happening inside when they didn't dare opening the doors. When they came up to a door and spotted what looked like closely grouped bars through the window, they came closer and looked.

"Cells," Martha frowned when she had her turn at peeking. When Brannigan looked, at first, he saw the people in the cells and tried to make out if any of them were Agnes. He couldn't see her, but it didn't mean he didn't recognize anyone.

"That's Erlin!" he whispered. "You met her husband," he told the girls. "He's the one who brought Alfred." Santana had barely gotten a second to look before she ducked away from the window and turned to the others, holding a finger to her lips. There had been guards, entering through any other door, and until they were gone, none of them could move.

"They're going," Santana whispered as she took a very careful look two minutes later. She waited a minute more once they'd gone through the door, and then she nodded to Brannigan.

"Let's be quiet now, girls," he told her and Martha, and they went through the door.

They were so quiet that none of the prisoners really noticed anyone had come in until one of them sat up, looking like he was trying to find something he couldn't see…

"Hello?" the man called, which stirred the others near him to look around.

"Martha?" a girl's voice was heard.

"Brittany?" Martha blinked, looking for her.

"Brittany?" Santana stepped forward.

"Santana!" Brittany's voice came again.

"Brittany!" Santana followed the sound to one of the cells. And then she froze. She had to clamp her hand to her mouth so she wouldn't shout. But there was a cat girl standing on the other side of the bars, and it wasn't Agnes. One look into those blue eyes and she knew it was her… "Britt… What happened…"

"Dad?" another girl stepped up next to Brittany, and now Brannigan was the one to let out a strangled cry as he reached her in a few quick long strides. By the way he responded to her, one might have thought it was perfectly normal that she looked human. But then he was just so happy to see her there, alive and for the most part well.

"Agnes, my Agnes," he grasped her hand, touched her face. "Are you alright, are you hurt? You look just like your mother," he shook his head in amazement.

"Never mind that, we need to get out of…" Martha started to say. Then she stopped, and Brittany saw her teetering oddly.

"Martha? What's wrong?" she asked, just as she realized Santana and Brannigan were acting the same.

"What's happening?" Agnes gasped.

"Localized resonant field," the nameless man told her. "Confuses them, disorients them, knocks them out if it goes on long enough, and if it goes on too long…"

"Cover your ears!" Brittany pleaded of Santana, who looked like she might drop to the ground at any moment.

"It's no use," the man told them. "It won't stop until whoever initiated it decides to stop it."

"Dad!" Agnes gasped, following her father's descent as he crumpled to his knees. "Dad, please, hold on!" she begged him. He looked like he was trying to nod, to reassure her. But he wasn't doing well, and neither were Santana and Martha, the last of which was futilely trying to keep the younger girl from hearing the shrill tone only the three of them seemed able to hear. And then just as suddenly as it had begun, the tone went away, and with a gasp, the three sat on the ground, hunched over, catching their breaths.

"Dad?" Agnes asked, crying.

"'m all… all…" Brannigan stammered.

"It'll have weakened them," the nameless man volunteered. He knew what it would do; he'd controlled it in the past. "I imagine that was the intention. They must have been seen." No later had he said this that the main door opened and Benedict walked in. He looked on the ground, looked at each of the three so-called rescuers, and he shook his head.

"If you wanted to come for a visit, you might have done better using the actual door," he pointed to where he'd come from. His guards followed into the room, scooping up Brannigan, Martha, and Santana, and locking them into the cells with the other prisoners. "Well you've come just in time, although I imagine your friend back there was trying to give you as much time as possible, yes?"

"F… Friend?" Martha asked, gripping the bars of her cell to try and pull herself up. Benedict gave her a smile she would have done anything to be able to smack off his face before turning back to the door behind him and giving a nod.

Three more guards carried him in, unresponsive and heavy. The back of his coat kept nearly making one of the guards trip and fall. But finally they put him down, dropped unceremoniously might have been more accurate. On the back of his neck, the Doctor had a bandage.

TO BE CONTINUED (SATURDAY)


	26. The Arrow Stops Here

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**26. The Arrow Stops Here**

_Sometime in New New York_

Whatever they had done to him before dropping him there in the middle of the room where Benedict kept his test subjects, the Doctor remembered very little of it, only that he'd briefly lost consciousness and now here he was. He might also have been doing his best not to show to which level he had already recovered. If he still looked weak, then he would have some level of advantage, lasting so long as Benedict didn't catch on, and there was no telling on that.

But as he laid there, on his back, his eyes took in the room as a whole and in parts. He saw prisoners, more than anything he saw their symptoms. He had not set eyes on them before, but he knew Trean's wife and daughter when he saw them. And then there were the three he'd done his best to stall for, Brannigan, Santana, and… oh, Martha, she was alright, yes… And the two girls… The cat who was no longer a cat, and the human who was something more now… _Yes, there it is._ Alfred had responded so badly to the treatment that he'd nearly died for it, but them… He'd have to examine them to know for sure, but just looking at them it felt like there could not have been a more successful outcome to this test. And that was the last thing they should want to see happen.

"Now then…" Benedict was walking around the Doctor on the ground, an expression of such victory on his face. He was looking at his prisoners both new and old, then to the Doctor on the ground and back again. "I think we'll go with…" he looked, and looked, and… "Her," he pointed, the Doctor saw, straight to Martha.

"No…" the Doctor mumbled, scrambling to try and rise, but Benedict pushed him back down with his foot.

"Yes," he confirmed.

"You can't go through with it, not with her, not with m…" the Doctor tried to warn him, which only got him another shove.

"I'm quite capable of making my own decisions, Doctor. You may think you're the smartest one around, but I know more than you think I do, certainly more than you do on the matter."

"She'll never survive it, you'll kill her!"

"Something necessary in my field. We learn quite as much, if not more, from our failures as we do our successes. Now, I will need to get a sample, prepare the injections. Your sample, Doctor, was a surprise, I must say. It will be fascinating to learn how the girl will respond."

"Listen to him, he knows what he's saying!" Martha shouted from her cell.

"I assure you, dear girl, no amount of resisting will do you or him any good," Benedict turned to her with smirk they would have gladly ripped from his face.

"Wait, wait, please," the Doctor held his arm up. "I have an offer!" he called out, with just the amount of desperation which would get the other man's attention.

"Doctor, what are you doing?" Martha was not so optimistic on this.

"Let him speak," Benedict declared, and the Doctor knew he was on the right track when he wasn't prevented from sitting up.

"You could do your experiment on the pair of us, me, and Martha, yes," he started, and seeing the look on Martha's face, he threw her one sidelong glance. "But there's an opportunity here you have yet to consider."

"Go on?"

"You've seen what it can do, with the girls," he gestured back to their cells. "And you know what I can do, I can see it in your eyes, you're intrigued." Benedict tried not to tip his hand, which proved near well impossible. He said nothing, leaving it up to the Doctor to continue. "So then why not change things about. Take her place, be your own subject." Now the other man laughed.

"Do you think me so foolish, Doctor?"

"No, I think you brilliant, daring and fearless. The kind of man just crazy enough to try, to be at the cutting edge of scientific advancement… They'll remember your name for centuries to come, and you'll be there to tell them all about it."

"How do you figure that?" He was intrigued, but not so easy to convince at this turn.

"Look at me. I'm more than 900 years old. Sounds crazy, yes, but you've examined my sample, haven't you? You've seen things you can't comprehend, things that shouldn't be possible. Time Lords, heard of them? When death is near, oh, it's fleeting. One moment I am perishing, the other I am born again, a new man, woman, if I'd like. Young, old, who knows? And sadly not ginger…" he trailed off for a moment.

For a few seconds, no one moved or said a word. A couple of Benedict's goons came into the room, standing in wait. Finally, the doctor reached into his pocket, showing a gleaming new syringe, filled with what Brittany and Agnes might have thought to be the same thing they had received.

"Alright, but first… something for you," he stepped up. "Hold him," he told the guards, who went and got the Doctor by the arms. "You, pull his sleeve back, hold the arm," he told the one at the Doctor's left arm, who obeyed. As much as he was following the progress of the needle as it neared him, he could still feel Martha watching from her cell, every instinct she had telling her to protest, to make him stop. That she said nothing told the Doctor she had either realized what he was trying to do, or she knew he wasn't doing this for nothing, whatever the reason.

The moment the plunger was pushed, the Doctor felt a new world of pain coursing through him, and the guards didn't have to hold him, he was too busy flailing on the ground.

"See to it that the formula is added to my own sampling, you know where it…"

Before he could go on, he very suddenly pitched forward and crumpled to the floor, revealing he had been conked over the head by one of the guards.

"Took… took you long enough!" the Doctor tried to stand, and the second guard, still at his side, went to help him as they pulled off their helmet. "W… Wait… Trean?" he blinked.

"Dad?" Risha rose from her cell.

"But if you're…" he turned to the first guard, the one who'd knocked out Benedict, and under this helmet came a shower of raven hair.

"That felt good," Valerie gripped the club still in her hand.

TO BE CONTINUED (MONDAY)


	27. Now We Know

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**27. Now We Know**

_Sometime in New New York_

The idea had been for Trean to sneak his way in and impersonate one of the guards. With the way their uniforms were made, helmet and all, no one would be the wiser, and when Benedict inevitably double crossed him, the Doctor would have an ally on hand that wasn't in fact trapped behind bars at the moment. They'd split up before the Doctor could come into view of the mansion and, therefore, of the guards. This was where the plan had changed, though the Doctor would only become aware of this later.

After the Doctor had gone, while Trean was working out a way to infiltrate the mansion, he'd been accosted by Valerie. She'd taken the risk to leave the kids behind at the house, putting the kind of fear in them only a mother could on the repercussions of their leaving the house in any way until she or their father or both had returned. Tried as she might, after seeing what they'd done to her son, and knowing they had her daughter and, if they caught him, which they probably would, her husband as well, she could not sit back and do nothing. Running into Trean and finding him without the Doctor after she'd seen them leave together was a surprise, but once she knew what the Time Lord was planning, she wanted in.

When she had seen her daughter in that cage, at first, she hadn't realized it was her. She'd looked for a cat girl, but the one she found, she soon realized, was actually the human girl, Brittany. Her eyes had swept to the side, but it had taken several seconds before she understood the one who was human at this time was her girl, her Agnes. Once she'd understood this, it seemed completely incredible that she wouldn't have figured it out sooner, when Agnes was now a mirror image of herself at that age, with just that spark that, feline or not, would have made her for Brannigan's child.

Agnes was freed from her cage, where she ran into her mother's arms. The other prisoners were also let out. Brittany hurried to Santana, worried for her after how she'd been incapacitated before. The other girl hardly batted an eye at finding her friend was now a cat, and she held on to her, only relieved that she had her back. Brannigan was reunited with his wife and daughter, and not one of them brought up the fact that Brannigan had gone sneaking off like a big hero on his own.

Trean had finally found his family, and now all he could do was see the state he had found them in. His daughter was so strangely disfigured, though in seeing her he was reminded of a handful of people around the city with similar symptoms. Beneath all the mismatched features, he could still see his little girl, and that was all he had wanted to get back. But then his wife, his Erlin… He could see there was something different about her, and it was soon that he knew what had been done to her. When she'd seen him, she'd looked so stricken, like she knew she was supposed to know him, but she couldn't figure out why. What she must have known, judging from her reaction to him, was that she would always be safe around him. When he held out his hand to her, she took it without hesitation. Trean didn't know if this would be permanent, if she would never regain full access to her memories, but if she didn't, then he would do his best to remind her, no matter how long it took.

And there was Martha, who made a straight line for the Doctor, still on the ground. He grunted something at her ear, and she scrambled to Valerie, asking to borrow her uniform. With the borrowed clothes, Martha was able to sneak out of the cell room undetected and find what the Doctor needed. While she was gone, Benedict had been pulled into a cell, bound and gagged, the better to keep control of him. Some of the prisoners showed reticence at this act, and soon they would all come to decided they should have realized what would come next.

After Martha returned with a syringe, the others, prisoners and rescuers alike, watched her inject it into the Doctor. He was locked in spasms for a few moments before, but slowly he started looking like he was getting better. He tried to sit up and Martha went to help him.

"Well, that's one way of finding things out, wouldn't you say?" he told Martha with a quivering laugh as though he was tipsy. He wasn't completely solid on his feet yet, and for several minutes more, every so often, they would have to keep him from falling over. "And now I think I know how to fix them."

"You can change us back?" Agnes asked.

"You just watch me," he pointed at her with confidence. There was a rumble of voices.

"What if we don't want to be changed back?" a woman asked, another of the prisoners. "What if we like the way we are?"

"You can't be serious," Martha was baffled.

"What would you know?" a man jumped in like he'd been insulted.

"I'm sorry, but…" she started to reply, but with the angry looks she got, she thought better of it.

"This was never meant to happen to you, Doctor Benedict meddled with some very…"

"I'm better now than I was before," said a deformed man.

"Better now, living in a cage?" Santana scowled.

"But we're not in cages now, are we?" said the woman. "And if that's the case, then I don't see anything better than to protect the one who made us this way," she touched the bars of the cell in which they'd placed Benedict. "So you have a choice now. Leave him, leave this place, and we shall leave it there. Stay, or try and come anywhere near our doctor, and we will have to retaliate."

Within two minutes the Doctor, Martha, Santana, Brittany, the three Brannigans, Trean and his family, Arpen and the still nameless man, were stumbling past the gates, dumbstruck.

TO BE CONTINUED (WEDNESDAY)


	28. Well Enough Alone

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**28. Well Enough Alone**

_Sometime in New New York_

The walk back to the Brannigans' house was almost surprisingly quiet. They realized what they must have looked like, the huddled group hurrying along. There was still a mild concern as to whether or not Doctor Benedict would have sent anyone to bring them back. At the same time, there was something of finality about it in some of their eyes. They had gotten their people back. Brannigan and Valerie were reunited with their daughter, Santana with Brittany, Trean with his wife and daughter… All in all, the struggle could be said to be over. But for others it wasn't so. Still, they waited until they'd made it to the house.

As soon as they'd come through the door, there was the hurried approach of four young cats, as they came in hopes of finding all those members of their family who'd been out there. They were relieved to see their mother and father. When they saw their sister, they startled, and Agnes bowed her head.

"Now, now, don't look at her like that," the Doctor admonished them. "She's a miracle of science that sister of yours." Agnes stared at him, undecided as to whether she was happy about this, and then suddenly she remembered.

"Where's Alfred, can I see him?"

"Yeah, I want to see him, too," Brittany stepped up. The young cats blinked, amazed at her transformation. She could have been their sister, and if they hadn't heard both girls speak, they might have thought there'd been some sort of misunderstanding.

"Let him rest, he…" Valerie started to say.

"Of course, go right on ahead," the Doctor cut in, and rather than to debate who to listen to, they chose the one that would give them what they wanted and they hurried up the stairs, while the Doctor turned back to Valerie, who was glaring at him.

"Go on, Val, they thought he was dead," Brannigan stepped up to his wife, who slowly relented.

"They can't stay in there too long."

"No, absolutely," the Doctor agreed. "Besides, I'll need to have a go myself," he pointed up to the second floor.

"What for?" Brannigan started to ask, but Martha didn't need the answer.

"You want to go after Benedict."

"Doctor, please, can't we let this be? It's done," Trean spoke up.

"Why would I possibly do that?" the Doctor looked at him like that was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard. "Ask your wife, ask your daughter." Risha bowed her head. She was still uncomfortable with people seeing her in proper light, people who weren't like her. She'd made the walk home with the blanket from her cell to hide her face. Her mother at her side never realized she was being referred to when the Doctor named her as Trean's wife. For now, the best she had was a sense that she could trust Trean and that if he said to do something then there was probably a good reason to listen.

"The experiments…" Risha spoke slowly. "They're getting worse."

"He's messing with something he doesn't understand the way he thinks he does. If this keeps up, he'll create something one day, and it'll bring danger and destruction with it. All of you, in this city, Brannigan, Valerie, you know, what about you?" he looked to Trean and his family. "The Motorway, remember that? All those years, stuck in… well, traffic? And why was that, how did it start? Something simple, something well-intentioned, well enough… If Benedict carries on, it could make the Motorway look like afternoon tea."

There was little argument left, so a few minutes later, the Doctor, with Martha, went upstairs to see the trio who'd earlier been captured by Benedict's guards. Alfred was sitting up on the bed, clearly not of a mind with his mother on the whole 'needing rest' situation, while Brittany and Agnes sat across from him. When the Doctor and Martha came in, it sounded as though the girls were still in the midst of telling him about what had happened down in the basement. Alfred looked almost sad he'd missed it.

"Sorry to interrupt, but can I come in and talk for a minute?" the Doctor asked.

"Sure," Agnes agreed, and they came in, the Doctor pulling up a chair from the corner and sitting next to the bed, while Martha stood behind him.

"Now this is important, I need you to think back to when you were over there. Did you ever see Doctor Benedict at any time?" They all nodded. "Good, focus on that, close your eyes if you have to." Alfred shut his eyes. Brittany squeezed hers tight. Agnes just kept looking at the Doctor. "Did he have something on him, something that might have been hidden…"

"How can we see it if it was hidden?" Brittany pointed out.

"It could have slipped out," Martha offered. "Or he could have held it at one time…" Again, Brittany was the one to intervene, only this time she held up her hand like she was in class. "Did you see something like that?"

"I think so, I…" She hesitated for a moment before opening her eyes. She turned to Agnes. "Remember, he had this thing. When he came and saw us, and he looked at us because we'd changed. There was something around his neck, it was peeking out from under his vest…"

"A necklace?" the Doctor looked momentarily less enthused.

"I do remember, I… I was closer to him than you were, and it felt… strange. I just thought it was more symptoms because of the rest, what he did to us, but… maybe it wasn't, I don't…" Now the Doctor was back to leaning forward.

"What did it feel like?" Agnes searched for the word, frowning.

"Optimistic?"

"Optimistic," the Doctor repeated, and Agnes nodded.

"Inspired," she added, and the Doctor stood, turned, and moved out of the room without a word. Confused, Martha and the others scrambled to follow him.

"We need to get back inside, we need…" the Doctor started to tell the group downstairs.

"I'll do it." They turned to see Brittany at the bottom of the stairs. "He'll let me back in, because I was special. And you shouldn't go there anyway, he'll try and hurt you again."

"I can go with her, I'll say… I'll say I want to be changed, too," Santana came up from the other side. The Doctor looked about to refuse them, but somewhere in his mind, a good idea had presented itself.

"Alright, but Martha's going with you."

TO BE CONTINUED (TOMORROW)


	29. Secrets Must

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**29. Secrets Must**

_March 2012 – Lima, Ohio_

Sometimes Artie wished Gemma had never revealed herself to him. It seemed insane, especially after how hard he'd tried to get her to do it for a while, but at the point where he was at now, he actually missed those days. He missed snooping around with Puck, wondering what was happening in their city, in their school, that would make the Doctor send her companion in such a fashion. Back then, finding out that Santana and Brittany had met the Doctor, too, and then finding out that Quinn had done so as well, that there were all these versions of the Doctor in different bodies, all of it would have intrigued him. Now, it only added more and more stress.

When Quinn had told them her story, in that one moment, he had sort of… reverted. He'd forgotten about Gemma and her warning, her request. He was simply enthralled with the tale, wanted to know more and more. Only after she'd been done, and he'd gone on his way again, he had crossed 'Miss Harrison' in the hall, and their conversation had played back in his head, the one where she'd confessed to her identity, the same one where she had told him to keep the truth contained, to not let it get too far. And what was he doing now?

Every time someone else came along, their circle got wider and wider. Once it had only been him and Puck, and that had been manageable, for sure. Then they'd pulled Sugar in. Then both Brittany AND Santana were added. And now there was Quinn. It seemed every time things were starting to stabilize, someone would wedge in, forcing their circle out of shape, putting them into further stages of adjustment, and then there'd be another someone…

It was fascinating, for sure, but if they stopped and stood back, they had to admit it was odd. Somewhere out there, across time and space, there was one alien, one singular being anyone might be lucky to meet, if circumstances allowed it, and somehow he had met 'her,' and Puck had met 'him,' and so had Sugar, and another 'him' for Brittany and Santana, and another 'him' for Quinn… This mysterious being, so elusive, had gone and met six of them, six McKinley students, all of them of the Glee Club. What were the odds of that happening, really? And who knew where it stopped. Now that he thought about it, he had to wonder if they were the only ones, if the circle would keep widening, until they couldn't even hide anymore…

Part of him wanted to pull Gemma aside, to get to talk to her in private again, so he might be able to ask her all these questions that were creeping up inside him, the biggest ones being why he had to keep the secret this way, and why she was really here. He knew it was just about impossible to expect a straight answer on either question, but it was driving him so mad that he couldn't keep himself from bringing it up for much longer. It was making him defiant. He wasn't far from deciding that Gemma had it wrong, that he should work with those friends he had on his side and get back to what he'd first attempted to do.

He thought back to when they'd talked to Quinn. She had told it all, how she'd been in her car one moment, and then when some guy had literally appeared out of nowhere in the seat next to her before grabbing her and taking her away, to another time, the time she'd spent in the circus, everything she had done with the Doctor and the captured aliens forced to perform, the circus hands… She'd told them how she'd been sent back to the moment in time where she'd been taken, only to be hit seconds later by the truck which had landed her in the chair until further notice.

Artie had thought about this part long and hard. And the worst, most agonizing part of it was that in his head all he could ask himself was 'wouldn't the Doctor have known? Shouldn't he have stopped it?' and then without much thought, his mind would counter with 'if he could do that, wouldn't he have done it?' But more likely, he believed the Doctor might have let it happen, for some supposedly noble and time-important reason. And that made him upset, more than he thought it would. Couldn't he have spared Quinn the hurt? If he cared for her, at all?

In the end, they had asked Quinn if she'd seen anyone else there that she might have recognized, that might have been out of place. They still hesitated to bring up Gemma's name, fake or otherwise, like Quinn was still too new to be read in to this side of their truth. Either way, it didn't matter. Quinn did not remember seeing anyone that way. When she asked why they thought she might have, they were so evasive, in a cartoonish sort of way, that there was no way Quinn would believe that. Artie felt just awkward about the whole scene, and he had half a mind to shoot the blonde an apologetic look, but Quinn brushed it off.

It was still connected, Artie believed that. Even if Quinn hadn't seen Gemma, it didn't mean she hadn't been there. By all accounts they'd had so far, the fact that she had ever seen was nothing short of a fluke. They hadn't been meant to see her, but it had happened, so maybe she'd been particularly sneaky when she'd been to see Quinn.

Then there were those other times where he felt maybe Quinn might not have been telling them the whole truth, that she might have been hiding parts of what she did know. Artie wouldn't dare suggest it, in front of the others, and especially in front of Quinn. There really were too many of them now, they were losing control. Soon, it would be so out of hand they couldn't even touch it from the tip of their fingers.

TO BE CONTINUED (SATURDAY)


	30. All Against One

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**30. All Against One**

_Sometime in New New York_

They couldn't even keep track anymore of who had stood outside spying on the mansion when since this had all started. But now here they were again, this time with Martha, Santana, and for the first time, Brittany. It could have come off as the worst plan in the world for them to go back there after they'd only just finished escaping, but then it wasn't over, and until it was, they could not give up.

"So…" Santana spoke, keeping her voice low but at the same time breaking the silence which had slowly been driving her crazy. "You do this kind of thing a lot, you and the Doctor?"

"We travel," Martha shrugged. "Sometimes, well… a lot of times, I suppose, it does involve some kind of… danger." She might have said 'adventure,' or any number of words that would have told on how much she enjoyed it, but she realized she was sandwiched between two impressionable fourteen-year-olds, and she knew she had to be careful not to put ideas in their heads that did not belong there.

"Do you see a lot of aliens? And other planets?" Brittany asked; clearly the danger part wasn't pushing her too far away.

"I get my share," she went for 'vague.' To them, however, it seemed to come off as 'holding out.'

"And does that share include the bean pole?" Santana asked.

"Bean p… Wait, do you mean…" Martha blinked, staring back at her and wishing the pieces hadn't taken that half a second more to click into place.

"He is so your boyfriend," Santana chuckled.

"He is n… If you had any id… He is so not my… boyfriend, trust me," Martha was halfway between helplessly mumbling and wishing very much her mouth would stop working.

"Then you want him to be," the girl was not so easily thrown, and Martha had to force herself to look away and back ahead.

"That is neither here nor… Wait, get down," she muttered, and as one the three crouched further down. There was probably no way anyone could have seen them even without ducking, but it was better this way. Martha put one hand on each girl's shoulder so they would stay down, and she stretched back up until she could see. "Right, if we're going to do this, we need to decide how and then…"

"I have an idea," Santana cut in. They turned to her. "He has to believe that we've turned on the Doctor, that we want to go back in so we can help him. Benedict, not the Doctor."

"Right," Martha nodded as though to say 'go on.'

"Right, so you two will go in the front," Santana started again. Brittany had immediately opened her mouth to complain, and Santana held up her hand to quiet her. "It'll be alright, better even, then I can go find the Doctor and tell him. But that comes after. Brittany needs to go. She's his big success, he'll be blinded by her. And Martha, you need to go with her, so she'll be safe," Santana directed these words directly at the Doctor's companion, so she would know how important this was.

"Absolutely," Martha promised.

"I can help make sure you'll get in, it'll be easy. We'll get in an argument, loudly and publicly. I'll try and get her not to do this, but she won't want to listen, she'll want to go back to Benedict. We'll be so good at playing off each other, they won't know what hit them." At this, Brittany had to smile.

"So we're tricking them?"

"That's exactly what we're doing," Santana nodded, returning the smile.

"Okay," she scooted nearer.

Santana had done her best not to appear freaked out by Brittany's transformation, but deep down she knew it did do a bit. It had to. How exactly was one supposed to be faced with the person they might care about the most in the world outside of her relatives now transformed into a cat and NOT freak out? But she wouldn't show it, not with Brittany right there. It had to be strange for her, too, although with how much she was into cats, who knew? She might actually be completely alright with this… which was exactly what they had to count on to make this thing work.

They couldn't well expect to know what Benedict's guards must have thought when they saw the scene unfold before them. The best they could do is hope that it would work.

Brittany came shuffling into the open, with Martha's arm around her shoulders in a way that anyone could interpret as her attempting to shield and protect her as they hurried along. What she needed to be protected from would be unclear, until Santana also appeared, seconds later, running after her.

"Britt, wait!" she called.

"No!" Brittany called back. "I'm not listening to you!"

"You're not making any sense, this is crazy!" Santana shouted.

"No, it's not! You want me to change!" she accused before looking back to Martha pleadingly. "You won't let them change me, will you?"

"I promise I won't," Martha valiantly vowed. "You get away from her!" she commanded, looking back at the girl tailing them.

"You stay out of this, it's none of your business!" Santana spat at her. "Brittany, come on, we can go home now!"

"I don't want that! It's my life, I get to choose!"

"Damn it, Brittany, why do you have to be like this? Why do you have to be so stupid?"

If the guards had any insight into who these girls were for each other, they would have known that the clincher, agreed upon earlier, was one Santana had hated having to use, no matter how much Brittany had promised it would be alright, that she would know the real truth. They couldn't deny it did the trick. In the momentum that had been building up, even if it was fake, the word had come in like the killing blow, the thing that would get her crying.

"Just go away and leave me alone!" she crooned as Martha led her on.

Santana let them go, and as hard as it was to do it, she stayed where she stood and watched as the pair reached the gates and, in a matter of seconds, was escorted inside. She had no idea what would happen there, if they would be trapped, or hurt, but they'd chosen to do it, and now the best she could do was hurry and make it back to the Doctor.

TO BE CONTINUED (MONDAY)


	31. Blindfolds

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**31. Blindfolds**

_Sometime in New New York_

The moment, only seconds after they'd been let into the mansion, they were strong-armed toward the basement by some of the guards, Brittany and Martha were quick to act surprised, even though they had expected it so much they had practically held still, the better not to be hurt when they were led off.

When they were pushed through the door back into the room with the cells, they were equally unsurprised to discover that those who had turned on them, declaring themselves loyal to Benedict were back in their cells and looking absolutely crestfallen. Aspen and Risha had been telling them all along, but they wouldn't listen. Benedict did not care for them. If they died, they died, and alive or dead, they were nothing more than test subjects to him. The only thing they had done worth thanking was to get rid of his 'invaders,' and he had expressed this gratitude by NOT killing them or throwing them out on the street. He had put them back where he had use of them instead.

At least they couldn't accuse Benedict of not being a cautious and smart man. When Brittany and Martha were put into two vacant cells, their hands were bound behind their backs and they were blindfolded.

After the guards had left, the moment the door had shut, the other prisoners had started singing a different tune, begging for Brittany and Martha to help them, to get that friend of theirs to help them out. There were so many of their voices all at once that neither of the blindfolded girls realized something was happening outside at first. They only caught on to the fact that the number of voices was diminishing when there were only a few left, three or four, then two, then one, then none… The room was quiet.

"Martha? Are you there?" Brittany asked, her voice trembling.

"I'm here," she confirmed.

"What's happening? Where did everybody go?"

Before Martha could say anything, which wouldn't have been more than 'I don't know,' she heard the door to her cell slide open. She scrambled, suddenly all too aware that she was a sitting duck, bound and unseeing. But then there was a woman's voice.

"It's alright, I'm not here to hurt you," she said.

"Who…"

"I'm going to take your blindfold off, alright? Don't move." The light wasn't so bright down in the basement, but still Martha blinked for a moment, letting her eyes adjust. As they did, she found the source of the voice being a dark haired woman with a kind smile. She wore a hooded robe, the hood just barely pulled back so her face was visible.

"What's happening?" Brittany called up, still blind to the situation. Martha couldn't help but notice that when the woman looked over and saw the cat girl, there was a flash of recognition, almost like she knew her and she was stunned to find her this way. But then she turned back to Martha.

"I need you, both of you, to stay quiet, alright?" the woman asked, turning from one to the other even though Brittany was still blindfolded. "If they catch me in here, it won't be pleasant for any of us. Here," she fished something out of her pocket, moved about to get around Martha, and placed the thing in her hand. "This should help you get those hands free, just… use it wisely," she nodded. "Now I need to put that blindfold back on," she pointed to her eyes apologetically.

"Wait, no, hold on," Martha stretched out of reach. "Who are you?"

"Can't tell you that," the woman smiled like there was some kind of hidden joke in this statement. "One day, hopefully, it'll all become clear, but until then…" She was fast, and in the next moment Martha's sight was obscured once more, the blindfold sliding over her eyes. "Do me a favor? Look after him?" Martha stared up at her, at least up to where she heard her voice come from.

"Do you mean… The Doctor, you know him, don't you?"

"Can't tell you that either."

"But you just said…"

"I know what I said, now promise you'll do it."

Martha hesitated for a moment, considering her helpful stranger. The first thing she'd thought of was that she might be someone from the city, maybe someone who knew the truth, who'd lost a family member or something. But now with the introduction of this request, she thought she would have to be a friend of the Doctor. The more time went on though, the more she thought somehow this was a companion of the Doctor, same as she was, only she couldn't have been his now, could she? So was she from his past or his future?

"Hello? New New York to Martha Jones?" the woman snapped her fingers near her face, and Martha startled.

"I swear. I'll look out for him."

"Good. Thank you," the woman replied, and this was not at all sarcastic. "You can't tell him about me, not even that I was here, do you understand?"

"Yes," Martha nodded in her general direction.

"That goes for you, too, cat girl."

"Okay," Brittany blinked into her blindfold when they acknowledged her again.

"Why are you doing this?" Martha still had to ask. There was silence for a beat, and Martha thought the woman might have left.

"It's just what I do. Now when he asks what happened, you tell him someone helped you, but that's all. Got it?"

"Got it," Brittany answered.

"Got it," Martha followed. She waited for her to say something else, but now the silence continued. "Hello? Are you still there?"

"I am, I'm right here."

"No, not you, Brittany," Martha turned her head toward the girl's cell.

A few seconds later, they began to hear the stirrings of the other patient prisoners, who sounded as though they were waking up. With the sudden and unexpected arrival of her mystery helper, Martha had not even bothered to look around and see why they had all gone silent. Whatever she had done to them, it was now wearing off, and they were none the wiser. The only one who had a new advantage was Martha herself, with the tool she kept tucked in her hands, ready to use when the time came.

TO BE CONTINUED (WEDNESDAY)


	32. Enemy Over the Gates

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**32. Enemy Over the Gates**

_Sometime in New New York_

After so many years, so many companions, so many… situations, the Doctor was surprised at his capacity to still assume people would go right when told to go right, and left when told left. But then there were those times, equally frustrating, when someone going left rather than right allowed him to come up with a brand new solution. Let them go any which side they chose: he had a direction of his own to follow, and maybe it would all work out in the end. This would not come to him right away, not until the next moment he'd come face to face with Martha Jones.

When Santana had come back to find him and tell him what they had done, he'd been immediately aggravated. That was not the way to go, no, and by now they were probably locked up, right back where they'd started from, which meant they would have to be released. Now already with their arrival Benedict would be on highest alert. This was a problem, but solving problems was something the Doctor thought himself skilled enough at handling.

He hadn't even tried to talk the Brannigans into staying behind at this point, though he wasn't going to take all of them into the mansion with him, it just would not do. It was at least of some comfort that they seemed to understand this already.

It wasn't until they were nearing the mansion that they became aware that they appeared to be leading a crowd. The Doctor stopped and turned, looking at them all, and he recognized many of them for having examined them earlier. There were those others he didn't know, however by their features alone he could guess they were the test subjects' families.

"You're going to stop him, won't you, Doctor?" a woman asked, holding fast to the hand of an older man who would have to be her father.

"Well, that… that is the idea, I suppose," he replied, and voices rose in agreement.

"We will help you then," called one of the men, and the crowd's cry was louder still, which forced the Doctor to raise his hands.

"Alright, easy now!" The voices hushed. "Better. So…" He looked at them all, much too many for him to logically bring into the mansion with him. There was no doubt they would do whatever was necessary to help take down the man who had taken advantage of them, hurt them, pretended to care when their lives meant nothing at all to him. There had to be a way for them to be useful but from a safe distance, and… "Right, here's what we can do."

The guards at the gates would soon find themselves strongly outnumbered, as the crowd neared, swollen to an even greater size than it already was as it marched forth and recruited others at the same time. They were loud, and they were not going anywhere.

"Show your face, Benedict!" Valerie stood at the front, bellowing at the top of her lungs while the others shouted and waved their arms in anger. Around her, Abigail, Alice, and Allen were looking near on feral as they faced down the guards. Even Alfred, still recovering and looking as botched as he had been, was giving everything he had.

Meanwhile, waiting for their moment, in what felt like constant déjà vu on that day, the Doctor, Brannigan, Santana, Agnes, and Alexander would breach into the mansion, hardly putting any effort into being discreet anymore, by the looks of it. If Benedict didn't know what they were going to do, then the Doctor had strongly underestimated him and his little toy.

"Right, you three," he turned to Brannigan, Agnes, and Alexander as they came to a stop around the corner. "You know what you have to do."

"We do, now you do what _you_ have to do," Brannigan nodded firmly, clapping a hand each on his daughter's shoulder and then his son's. "Come now," he told them, and they went ahead.

If all went well, they would position themselves in such a way as to be able to warn them if they needed to run, or worse. Putting them on lookout duty might have seemed like he didn't want them anywhere near, but then the task wasn't without its dangers, and if he was to be honest, well… They had a better chance of being left unharmed that way. He would have left Santana with them, too, but he knew very well that was not going to happen. He wanted to see to Martha, and she wanted to look to her friend, too.

"If they were just going to get captured again, then what was the point?" Santana muttered as they went on.

"A very good question, do be sure to ask them that one from me," the Doctor looked at her like he'd been waiting for someone to say those exact words.

"I mean I know part of it was kind of my idea, but…" The Doctor frowned, motioning for her to carry on quietly.

They would have to come through, not into the cell room this time but in the lab adjacent, the lab which might still be occupied by Benedict's people, if they hadn't been drawn to…

When they looked into the room, through the window in the door, the Doctor paused, pulling Santana aside. This wasn't right. They were all on the ground, unconscious… Had Benedict turned on them? It wouldn't be surprising, he guessed, but…

Tempting fate, he'd pushed the door open and peered inside. Santana had done the same, crouching to get a view. Only at the same time, another door opened, one they knew gave into the cell room, and through that opening they spotted the faces of Martha Jones and the cat Brittany. They were as startled to see the others as the others were.

"Doctor!" Martha stepped through, just as he did, and they briefly hugged.

"Did you do this? Hold on, how did you get out?"

"I'll explain later, we need to get them out of here." Looking over her head, he could see through the door that the other prisoners were out of their cells too.

"No, hold on… I know what we can do."

TO BE CONTINUED (TOMORROW)


	33. What Drives You

**"The Benevolent Doctor"**

**33. What Drives You**

_Sometime in New New York_

The way he moved about the room, one might have thought he had all the time in the world. As much as they tried to keep up with what he was doing, before long Martha, Santana, and Brittany had decided that the best thing they could do was stand back and let him do what he had to do and it would be done quicker. Martha would go back into the cell room, to keep the prisoners calm as they waited. As far as they'd known, they were about to be taken out of there, free, but now they were told to wait, and some of them were getting agitated.

Santana stood in the corner, Brittany by her side. She kept hold of her arm, maybe to make sure they wouldn't get separated again. She'd tried to hold her hand and found it too weird, with how it had changed, so she settled for her arm.

"What do you think he's going to do?" Brittany whispered to her.

"I don't know, maybe he's making something to blow this place wide open. That should stop him," she turned her eyes up to the ceiling, to wherever he might be.

"We'll get out of here first, right?" Brittany trembled at the thought.

"Or maybe it's something else," Santana kept thinking aloud. "It might be something to turn him into a weirdo like those guys in there," she nodded to the cell room.

"I'm not a weirdo, am I?" Brittany blinked.

"The good kind," Santana promised, and the cat girl was reassured.

"Yes, here we are…" the Doctor's voice drew them back, and they turned to see he had collected a number of syringes in a tray. "One of you fetch Martha, will you?" he called back. The girls looked at each other, and Santana ended up being the one to go. Left alone, Brittany spotted the Doctor as he stuck a few of the syringes in his pocket.

"What are those?" she made herself ask. The Doctor picked up one of the syringes still in the tray and he showed it to her.

"This should reverse what was done to you. I can stick you now, or I can do it to one of them first, your choice." The way he looked at her, she felt safe, and she stepped up.

"Is it going to hurt?"

"I'm not going to lie to you, it won't be pleasant. I mixed in a sedative, it'll knock you out so when you come to again, it'll all be over," he explained. She was nervous, but he would keep her safe, and that was what mattered.

"Did you do it?" Martha came in just then, with Santana in tow. The Doctor put Brittany's syringe in his other pocket before holding up the tray.

"Take these, administer them to the others. They'll need to lie down. I trust you know how to do this," he gave her a look and she met it with a half-hearted glare.

"Want to give me a hand?" she asked Santana, who threw a look to Brittany before following.

"Right, ready?" the Doctor looked at the cat girl, reaching in his pocket for the syringe.

Before he could get hold of it though, the opposing door, the one through which he'd come with Santana, burst open, and with Alexander Brannigan held before himself, Doctor Benedict walked in.

"Well I see you've been making yourself at home, haven't you, Doctor?" he looked around, seeing his people still unconscious on the ground.

"Oh, what can I say, nine hundred and some years, who knows how many more to go, and I still do not care for wasting even a minute of it. Had to keep myself busy while I waited for you. I do believe this was my most productive under the circumstances. But now here you are, our lord and master, and with some tricks up your sleeves, too, or anywhere else on your person," the Doctor nodded, and she didn't know how she knew, but Brittany had a feeling this last part was directed at her.

She looked to Benedict, with Alexander in front of him. The cat boy looked moderately spooked, but he wasn't completely helpless, and when Brittany caught his eye, while Benedict was rambling about some thing or another, she carefully motioned for him to reach for something, miming against herself. Alexander had the presence of mind to turn his eyes and catch sight of what she was indicating, dangling from the doctor's neck. He took a moment, and then all at once, his hand dove in.

It was all much faster than it felt in reality. First Alexander's hand closed on the thing around Benedict's neck, then he tugged it away, which both startled the man and surprised him enough to let go. In the next moment, the Doctor whistled, and Alexander tossed the thing to him before sliding out of Benedict's reach.

"What do we have here then?" the Doctor held up the object. Benedict's hand went to his chest, like he still expected it to be there, even though he'd seen it get taken away.

"You give that back!" he pointed a shaking finger at the Doctor.

"Why would I do a thing like that?"

"Give it here, Doctor, or… or…"

"Or what? What are you going to do, please, give it a thought," the Doctor nodded calmly, as he pulled out his sonic screwdriver. "I'm just going to do a thing, to…" He aimed it at the pendant, and in the next second, the soft light emanating from it dimmed and extinguished itself.

As soon as it did, Benedict gave a greatly distressed gurgle, his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he crumpled to the ground.

"You killed him!" Brittany gasped.

"Oh, no, he's alive, he is," the Doctor reassured her. "He's just going to sleep for a while now. He's just gone and lost something very dear."

"What's that?" she asked, and the Doctor looked to the pendant, weighed it in his palm.

"His muse."

TO BE CONTINUED (SATURDAY)


End file.
